


First, Do No Harm

by interlude



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Claustrophobia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I don't know how space stations work, Medical Inaccuracies, Murphy finds his new family, Murphy is scared of closed in spaces, Murphy-centric, Nurse Murphy, Post-Canon, SPACE SQUAD, spacekru
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2018-11-16 18:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11258799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interlude/pseuds/interlude
Summary: During the 5+ years aboard the Ark, Murphy stumbles into becoming the designated doctor.(Or: The Space Squad struggles to survive on the Ring, and Murphy learns how to make friends.)





	1. Burns

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the Latin phrase "primum non nocere" or "first, do no harm" - one of the fundamental principles of medicine.
> 
> I really love the idea of John Murphy getting to a point where he lives by the motto "first, do no harm" - especially in the very place where his stage of anger, violence, and revenge first started  
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you a million times to infernalandmortal for her great editing skills! The final draft of this story is a lot stronger because of her help.
> 
> Also, check me out on tumblr at bombshellsandbluebells!

For a long while, the seven of them lay in the corridor, boneless with exhaustion and relief. The quiet hum of the vents is the greatest sound Murphy’s ever heard.

 

He lies tangled with Raven and Emori, his legs entwined with Raven’s from when they fell, his hand clutching Emori’s shoulder, knuckles white with desperation. He breathes deeply, delighting in the feeling of filling his lungs with air.

 

Beside him, the girls are doing the same. Raven’s face is split with a wide grin. There will be problems later, with the fuel, the food – and Murphy knows that once she starts thinking of them, she won’t stop – but for now she appears content to focus on their victory.

 

He turns his head to look at Emori, laying on Raven’s other side. She smiles back at him, and, even now, his heart skips a beat when he sees it. Her eyes shine with unshed tears; her hair sticks to her forehead. He gently lets go of her shoulder, half afraid he’s been squeezing hard enough to bruise, even through the suit, and reaches out his trembling hand to caress her cheek. He’s so relieved he thinks he might cry. It builds in him like a storm, threatening to burst.

 

She’s alive. They’re _all_ alive.

 

He looks over his shoulder at the others. Bellamy and Echo lie next to each other, Bellamy sprawled across the floor and practically in Echo’s lap. His curly hair is flat and matted from his helmet. There are streaks through Echo’s white face paint from sweat. Beside them, Monty and Harper are curled tightly together. As Murphy watches, Monty carefully pulls his hands free and away from their bodies; they tremble in the open air.

 

Harper has noticed them too. “We need to do something about your hands,” she tells Monty softly, the words meant as a whisper, but echoing loudly in the silent corridor. The reminder seems to jolt them all into action, breaking the odd post-victory silence that had settled.

 

Murphy pulls his legs out from under Raven’s – careful not to jostle her bad one too much – and forces himself to stand. His exhausted muscles scream in protest. He feels weak all over, ready to do nothing but pull Emori close to him and sleep for hours, maybe days. But Harper’s right; Monty’s hands are fucked, and they’re only going to get worse with time.

 

He remembers how bad they looked in the short glimpses he caught while they were scrambling for the lost glove. More vividly, he remembers Monty’s scream and how much he groaned and grimaced through carrying the oxygenator. They don’t have a doctor with them, but they do have Medical Station, located somewhere on the Ring. It will have to do.

 

One by one, the others stand. Harper helps Monty to his feet.

 

“We should go find Medical,” Murphy says. Harper’s gaze snaps towards him. She looks wary, cautious – or maybe just confused. Like she doesn’t quite know how to handle him. It’s a response he’s growing familiar with. “Unless there was some sort of first aid kit in that rocket.”

 

“We didn’t pack anything,” Raven answers. “There wasn’t time. Becca might have thrown an emergency kit in there, but you’d probably have better luck in Medical.”

 

“I should check the–“ Monty starts in protest, waving a shaking hand towards the oxygenator, but Bellamy cuts him off.

 

“You’re not going to be any help to anyone if you don’t have working hands.”

 

“I got it,” Raven says. She limps towards it, her metal boots clanging against the Ark floor. The suit makes her movements clumsier than normal and her limp more pronounced. Murphy wonders if it’s painful for her to move in it outside of zero-g. He feels the familiar flickers of guilt.

 

“We need to turn the heating on, too,” Monty adds. He hesitates to move away from the oxygenator, even with Harper gently tugging on his arm.

 

“I’ll stay and help Raven with whatever she needs,” Bellamy assures him. His voice is strained; it cracks on the last word. He clears his throat and continues, “Echo can help, too. You guys go.”

 

Echo looks relieved at the suggestion, stepping closer to Bellamy’s side - or maybe stepping closer to the oxygenator, though Murphy doubts it. He doesn’t know her well enough to guess if her relief comes from receiving clear orders and a job to do, or if she’s just hesitant to leave the one person she seems to trust.

 

Bellamy’s eyes are glassy; they catch the light as he moves, and he blinks often, like he’s trying to clear them. He moves towards Raven like he’s not quite in control of his body, his movements jerky and stiff.  Echo eyes him warily, like she’s preparing to catch him when he falls. Clarke’s death presses on him like a physical weight. Murphy had watched him start to unravel in the rocket, but the fear they might die had clearly given him the strength to keep going. Even now, he looks determined to carry out every task Raven gives him before he lets himself mourn.

 

Clarke’s absence rests on all of them. Murphy almost laughs bitterly at the thought. The princess always did have to force herself into every situation; even here, when she hasn’t truly joined them back on the Ark, her ghost seems to lurk in the shadows, the elephant in the room no one wants to see. Even Murphy, not usually one to hold his tongue, is quite happy not bringing it up.

 

He’s surprised to find that part of him misses Clarke – or, at the very least, mourns her death. Their relationship has always been a difficult one: no longer enemies, but never quite friends, though sometimes something close to it. But she had saved Emori’s life, and for that, at least, he wishes she could have made it to safety and joined the ragtag team she sacrificed her life for.

 

The four of them make their way further down the corridor in silence, heading towards where the Ark-borne kids think Medical is. It’s hard to tell; most of the lights haven’t come back on yet, and the majority of the Ark looks the same – the same metal walls, the same lack of landmarks. It’s harder than Murphy had expected to recognize where they are after a year on the ground. Somehow, it seems like they’d been on Earth longer.

 

They walk slowly. Harper keeps her hand on Monty’s elbow. Emori trails a few steps behind them. When Murphy glances back at her, her eyes are wide, darting around and taking everything in, her expression caught somewhere between terror and amazement.

 

“What do you think?” he asks.

 

She meets his eyes. “It’s so –” she stops, struggling for an adjective. He’s never heard her so unsure before. “Gray,” she settles on. “There’s a lot of metal.”

 

Murphy can’t help but laugh; it’s bitter and almost harsh, and certainly not a pleasant sound. It echoes menacingly off the corridor walls. It almost feels like the Ark itself is laughing at them. “Yeah, not much to look at, is there?”

 

“I thought it would look more like the lab,’’ Emori continues, sounding disappointed. “White and with lots of light. It feels so dark in here. Is it this dark all the time?”

 

It is dark. The Ark is never as bright as Earth is, without the sun shining down on it, but normally it’s lit by the artificial light of fluorescent overhead lighting. Right now, only the emergency strips of light that run along the floors and stay lit 24/7 are still on. Murphy wonders if they’ve arrived during the Ark’s artificially constructed “night”, when all the overhead lights shut off automatically for 8 hours, or if they need to turn the lights back on manually, or if there’s a problem with the lighting that Monty and Raven are going to have to fix.

 

“No,” Harper assures her. “We need to turn the lights on. It will get brighter. Nothing like Earth but…brighter.”

 

The relief and excitement of being alive is starting to wear off. They’re all starting to come to terms with the reality of living on the Ark again for another five years. Murphy’s been actively avoiding thinking about it. His hatred for this place feels almost physical – an uncomfortable tingling under his skin. He feels itchy all over. Uncomfortable.

 

Trapped.

 

“At least there’s no rules this time,” Monty says, with a forced levity in his tone that fools no one.

 

Murphy grins at him. “Finally joining the ‘whatever the hell we want’ group, Green?” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Harper stiffen at that. Beside her, Monty pales.

 

Shit. He never can say anything right, can he?

 

“Why aren’t we floating in here?” Emori asks, unintentionally breaking the sudden tension. She doesn’t even seem aware, back to looking around and trying to absorb everything she sees. She peeks into rooms curiously as they pass, but always sticks close to the group. “Like Raven?”

 

“Artificial gravity,” Monty tells her. His voice breaks on the second word, and Murphy wonders if Monty’s in that much pain still, or if he missed something. He gets the sense he brought up something he shouldn’t have; Monty and Harper are more somber beside him than they were a moment ago.

 

He turns to look back at Emori and smiles. “If you ask Raven, I’m sure she’ll take you spacewalking.”

 

Emori grins back, the same carefree, ecstatic grin she gave him when she saw Raven floating in the rocket. He loves seeing her like that, and he’s relieved that there’s at least one thing she’ll love about space. If nothing else, he tells himself, she’ll have that.

 

“I think that’s it,” Harper says. She uses the hand not on Monty’s elbow to gesture towards one of the doorways.

 

Murphy pushes the door open, glad to find it unlocked, and steps inside. In the dim light, he can just barely make out a few beds in the first room. He knows that Medical continues on, curving around the corner to the right, made up of a bunch of awkwardly shaped “rooms” divided by plastic curtains.

 

He fumbles around on the wall for a light switch; finding it, he flips it on. The rest of the lights in Medical flicker on with a quiet hum. All four of them squint into the lights, their eyes taking a moment to adjust. Less than a day in space, Murphy thinks, and they’ve already readjusted to the dark.

 

Harper helps Monty over towards a bed and warily eyes his gloves. She moves her own hands towards his, then hesitates. For a moment, Murphy thinks he’s going to have to pull the gloves off for her, but Harper visibly steels herself and starts removing the first glove carefully. She stays steady and slow in her movements, and doesn’t stop or react, beyond clenching her jaw tightly, to Monty’s gasps of pain.

 

Murphy’s impressed.

 

As she removes the second glove, Murphy starts rummaging for supplies, opening cabinets and digging through drawers. Each place he tries turns out to be disappointingly – and troublingly – empty.

 

“Emori,” he calls. She turns towards him from where she had been hovering, watching Harper. “Check around for medicine or supplies.”

 

She nods and moves towards one of the rooms he hasn’t checked yet. This, she’s familiar with. “What am I looking for, exactly?” she calls from around a corner. He can hear the creaking of cabinet hinges as she searches.

 

“Anything,” he answers, shoving closed yet another empty drawer. “Anything they didn’t take down with them to Earth.”

 

“Is everything gone?” Harper asks, worried. She’s finished removing both gloves and is gently holding Monty’s wrists, rubbing soothing circles into the undamaged skin.

 

“Looks like,” Murphy says. He resists the strong urge to kick over the medical supply cart in front of him. Or start throwing things. Or scream.

 

The Ark could hardly handle illnesses and injuries with the limited medical supplies they had. What are they going to do with nothing? Surely someone’s going to get sick in the next five years. Someone else besides Monty is going to have an injury. They can’t have successfully made it into space in a 90-year-old rocket for two just to die later from lack of medical supplies.

 

The fucking irony, he thinks. After everything he’s been through, he’s back on the Ark dealing with a shortage of medicine.

 

“I found something!” Emori calls.

 

Hope blooms in his chest and calms the growing frustration. He hurries around the corner towards her voice, ducking through the plastic divider in front of him. Emori stands in front of an open cabinet. As he nears, she grabs something from inside and holds it out towards him.

 

“There’s bandages,” she explains. She clutches a roll of gauze in her hand. “And a few bottles of something.”

 

The cabinet is pretty barren, still, but it’s better than nothing. There’s a few more bandages, some rags, a large bottle with a thin layer of clear liquid resting in the bottom. He unscrews the lid and sniffs the contents. It reeks strongly of moonshine. Good; at least they have a disinfectant – as little of it as there is. He screws the lid back on and hands it to Emori, then grabs one of the rags.

 

There’s a few pill bottles in the back of the cabinet, most of them nearly empty. Abby and the other doctors must have missed this cabinet when they were preparing for their descent to Earth. It’s in the furthest room, tucked away in the back corner. Lucky for them.

 

The name of the medicine he stole for Abby dances tantalizingly on the edge of his memory, just out of reach. He doesn’t recognize any of the names on the labels in front of him. There’s no indication on any of the labels of what the pills actually treat, either, which is disappointing and completely unhelpful. Murphy’s hesitant to give Monty anything he doesn’t recognize or waste medicine that might be needed later, so he leaves it untouched. They can try to figure that out later. For now, he takes the rag and the gauze and the moonshine and returns to where Harper and Monty are waiting.

 

“What did you find?” Monty asks through gritted teeth.

 

“Anything useful?” Harper adds.

 

Murphy waves the gauze and the rag with moderate triumph. “Sort of. There’s some medicine; we can do inventory later.”

 

As he approaches the two of them, Harper tenses. She angles her body partially in front of Monty as a shield. “Do you even know what you’re doing?” she asks, accusatorily, her voice a sharp bite. Monty’s face asks the same question, though he looks far more trusting than Harper does. Or at least less likely to punch Murphy if he gets too close.

 

“No,” Murphy answers honestly. “But no one else does, either.”

 

He sets the gauze and the rag down on the bed and eyes Monty’s hands. They’re covered in angry, red, blisters. Some of them have ruptured, likely from forcing the gloves back on, and are now leaking a disgusting yellow pus. He winces in sympathy. They look bad – worse than Luna and her child had, actually, despite being exposed for such a short time.

 

Murphy wishes he could remember what Abby had done for Luna and the others, but the memories keep slipping from his grasp, half-formed, unclear. He hadn’t been focused on Abby’s actions at the time – he had been trapped in old memories, watching his own reflection in the sick child.

 

They left the closest thing they had to a doctor on the ground, and Murphy feels he’s a sad replacement. He doesn’t know how to treat radiation burns. He doesn’t know if this means Monty will get sick in the future. He doesn’t know _anything_.

 

His skin buzzes – with fear or agitation, he doesn’t know. Maybe both. It tingles, as if there’s energy caught underneath, humming through him. He can’t stop focusing on the metal walls around him; it seems, sometimes, when he looks away, that they might be closing in. It’s not that he thinks he would have handled being trapped in the underground bunker any better – it’s just that out of all the possibilities the Ark is the worst. He fucking hates this place – he left too many ghosts here.

 

A hand lays light on his back, startling him out of his spiraling thoughts. Emori stands at his side, rubbing gentle, comforting circles into his skin through the suit. Murphy sinks into the sensation, lets her movements chase the fear from his skin.

 

He has her, this time around. Together they can face anything – even the fucking Ark.

 

“We should wash the wounds,” Emori prompts, and he grabs her suggestion like a tether, pulls himself to shore, anchors himself. The walls are back where they should be.

 

There’s a hose running from the ceiling to the floor in the corner of the room, with a spray nozzle attached for water. Underneath, a few buckets. On the Ark, only certain rooms had access to the running water system that had been rigged up when the 12 stations were cobbled together. Most of the inhabitants received a strict weekly water ration in the form of plastic barrels and containers, but the stations where water was deemed essential, such as Farm Station and Medical, had direct access to the water supply and a strict limit on how much they could use daily.

 

Murphy eyes it dubiously. He’s never had access to it before. In the lighthouse bunker, and later in the mansion, it had taken a while to get used to the freedom of receiving water straight from the faucet, whenever he wanted. When he grabs the hose, he’s not even sure how to turn it on, at first. He fiddles with it, aiming the nozzle down towards one of the buckets, and then, finding a switch, flips it on.

 

Nothing happens for a moment. Then, a high-pitched and distant hum comes from outside the walls. The water purifier is heating up, turning back on after almost months of disuse. Eventually, a thin stream of water sprays into the bucket; he lets the bottom fill, then shuts it off. Gone are the days of the using the faucet as long and as often as he would like; they’ll need to carefully ration their water supply again.

 

Monty and Harper sit on the bed, still, whispering quietly to each other. Murphy can tell they’re trying to talk without him overhearing, neither of them quite comfortable with his presence. They quiet as he nears, watching him set the bucket down on the bed beside them.

 

“Water works,” he explains pointlessly.

 

“That’s good,” Monty replies. “The purifier probably still has water stored that didn’t get used before everyone left, but we’ll have to make sure it’s still working and will keep reclaiming water.”

 

Add that to the list of things they have to check and fix before they’ll survive up here again. Murphy remembers growing up here – how often things would break and require maintenance. Living on the Ark seemed to be one long repair job.

 

He holds out a hand towards Emori. She passes him the moonshine, and he pours a small puddle into his left palm. At the very least, he knows he needs to disinfect his hands before he touches Monty’s burns to keep the chance of infection down, though he’s unsure whether he’s supposed to also pour the disinfectant directly on the burns. He’s pretty sure that would hurt like a motherfucker, if he did.

 

There’s a sudden sting in his right hand. “Ah, fuck,” he hisses.

 

Emori steps towards him. ‘What?” she asks sharply. “What is it?” She eyes the bottle in her hands with distrust.

 

“Nothing,” he assures her. “I just had a cut on my hand. It stings.”

 

The pain triggers a memory. He remembers sitting here in Medical, ten-years-old, arm stinging with a vicious burn - and a guard at the door in case he tried to run. He had been been careless when he set the officer’s room on fire, more concerned with burning everything in sight that keeping himself free of the flames.

 

The water is mildly cool to the touch, but not cold – which is good. He remembers Abby sitting by his bed, calmly explaining her actions to him as she treated the burn, even though he had been too out of it to respond. Cool water to soothe, he recalls, but not cold enough to damage the tender skin. Murphy mimics her actions seven years later, dipping a rag in the bucket and wringing out the excess water.

 

But when he reaches out a hand for Monty’s, Harper tenses again. Her eyes narrow at Murphy’s, flicker from his face to the rag and to Monty’s hands. She worries her lip with her teeth. “I’ll do it,” she says, leaving no room for argument.

 

Murphy almost protests – he actually knows what he’s doing, now – but sighs, and lets it go. It’s probably best he doesn’t start a fight with Harper in the first few hours of living with her - not if they’re stuck together for the next five years.

 

“Sure,” he drawls as he hands over the rag, indifferent, but as she moves towards Monty’s hands, he grabs her wrist to halt her movements. Her eyes are scorching when they connect with his. “Be careful,” he stresses. “Pat them with the rag, don’t rub them – unless you want to irritate the burns.”

 

“I don’t want that,” Monty jokes – a good attempt that fails to break the tension.

 

Harper studies Murphy for a moment; he can’t read her expression – does she disagree? Does she not trust his judgement? Is she just confused by him? Is it d, all of the above? Probably.

 

But then she nods, sharp and quick. It’s probably as close to ‘thanks’ as he’s going to get from her right now, maybe ever. “Am I trying to clean them?” she asks as she works, and he thinks the fact that she’s even asking – that she’s willing to take his advice – is a minor victory.

 

“As much as we can without disinfectant that won’t burn as bad as the radiation,” Murphy says. “And the cool water should help the pain, too.”

 

It takes a few minutes for Harper to finish, working slowly to keep it as painless a process as possible. Murphy manages to find some tape and waits with it and the gauze while she works.

 

After a while, she sits back and lets out a deep sigh. “Done. What now?”

 

Murphy steps forward and, when he moves towards Monty’s hands, Harper doesn’t object, though she still watches him carefully. He wraps the hands with gauze, taking care to cover the open blisters, but keeping the bandage loose against the skin.

 

He explains as he works, repeating words he remembers hearing several years ago. “The burns need to breathe to heal, so make sure these don’t get too tight. And don’t cover them back up with any kind of clothing. The bandages are just to keep anything from getting in the open wounds.”

 

“How do you know all this?’ Monty asks. Unlike with Harper earlier, it’s curiosity, not an accusation.

 

He finishes taping the ends of the gauze and then rolls up the right arm of his suit. A pale, blotchy scar glimmers in the overhead lights. “That came from a burn. I remember how Abby treated it.”

 

At the time, it had been easier to focus on the doctor treating his burn than the fact that his mother was dead. Or that he was headed to the Skybox for the next seven years, and then, after that, out to space. He remembers vividly how kindly Abby had spoken to him, then, as if she were trying to help soothe more pains than the one in his arm. They had both understood exactly where he was going after he was out of Medical, but she hadn’t treated him differently for it. It had been the same way she had treated him when the rest of the Ark made it down to Earth, when she had treated his wounds from the grounder prison camp – with kindness. Like he wasn’t a horrible, violent criminal.

 

But remembering Abby has a bitter sting to it, now. Maybe she just used up all her kindness on him before the island.

 

“Can’t promise it’ll work the same with radiation burns,” he adds, “but it’s the best we have to work with.”

 

“Thanks,” Monty says, sincere. Murphy gives him a nod, then busies himself with their supplies, rewrapping gauze that was already mostly wrapped, fiddling with the tape, keeping his eyes down and away from Monty’s.

 

Harper keeps Monty balanced as he pushes off the bed and stands, steadying him with her hands since he can’t use his own. She’ll probably have to act as his hands for a couple weeks, but she accepts her new job without complaint.

 

The two of them leave. Murphy keeps fiddling with the tape and the gauze, then grabs the rag and lays it on the side of the bucket to dry; they’ll probably have to find a way to wash it, he thinks. Add it to the list.

 

Emori comes to stand beside him. She places a hand on his arm and waits for him to turn to her. When he does, she grins, impish and excited – the same grin that always compels him to follow her wherever she goes. “Show me the ship?” she asks, and really, how can he say no to her?

 

He flips off the lights to Medical as they leave.

 


	2. Cuts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Space Squad settles into life on the Ring. Murphy continues to stumble into treating injuries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I continue to fake my way through writing about medical treatments and living on space stations.
> 
> Sorry for the delay getting this chapter out. Life has been hectic. Thank you again everyone who reviewed for all your lovely comments!
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks again so much to infernalandmortal for all her encouragement, support, and editing. And for helping me problem solve when I get stuck on where to go next.
> 
> Check me out on tumblr at bombshellsandbluebells.

There’s not a lot of time to rest after that. Bellamy immediately puts them all to work, breaking them into different groups and assigning jobs based on what Monty and Raven tell him is needed.

 

The oxygen generator is still running without problem, and both Raven and Monty assure them it should continue to do so, but there are plenty of other systems that need to be adjusted or repaired. None of them know the full story of how the Ark separated from the Ring, but judging from Raven’s frustrated comments, it wasn’t a smooth separation.

 

The heating turns off and on sporadically, dropping from moderately warm to chilly without warning. It drops down to frigid temperatures during their first night, and Murphy wakes up shivering, teeth chattering. Emori has wrapped herself around him as tightly as possible, as if she’s trying to bury herself in him. She’s already awake, shaking harder than him, and he remembers that she’s used to much warmer climates than he is.

 

They’re sleeping in a room that isn’t meant to be a bedroom, on a cot that Murphy had dragged in from the Skybox. There aren’t any living quarters in Go-Sci Ring aside from the cells, but Murphy isn’t willing to ever trap himself in there again, even just to sleep. He had found one of the biggest rooms he could to claim as their bedroom – not for any selfish reasons, but because he felt more comfortable that way, with the walls farther away from him. He also props the door open, which means that when the heat turns off, the room gets cold quickly.

 

“I’ll be right back,” he murmurs to Emori, and pushes himself out of bed. They only have one thin blanket, but there should be more in the Skybox – there’s plenty of cells not being used.

 

Bellamy seems to have had the same idea. When Murphy reaches the Skybox, he’s already going in and out of cells, carrying a giant bundle of blankets in his arms.

 

“We should gather them all up,” he tells Murphy, white, foggy clouds spilling into the cold air with his words. “Keep them in one location.”

 

They work in silence. Harper appears at some point and jumps in to help.

 

“Monty went to help Raven figure out what’s wrong,” she tells them as they put the last few blankets on top of the pile they’ve left at the entrance. Murphy gives her a pointed look, about to ask about his hands, and she adds, “He promised he wouldn't touch anything.”

 

“Good. It’ll be fixed by morning then,” Bellamy says with a grin – Murphy can’t quite tell if it’s authentic optimism or just meant to assure the two of them. Bellamy still looks a little cracked around the edges – brittle and close to breaking. His eyes are red and puffy, and Murphy wonders if he was even asleep before the heating shut off, or if he’s been up all night crying. But it’s uncomfortable to think about Bellamy crying, and more uncomfortable to think of why, so Murphy ignores it and pretends he hasn’t noticed.

 

They each take a few blankets, Bellamy grabbing a few for Echo, as well, and then bid each other good night. Murphy is the only one who leaves the Skybox entirely; Bellamy and Harper both head back towards the cells they must have settled in.

 

When Murphy returns to his room, Emori has bundled herself tightly in the one blanket. She peeks out to look at him, and his heart aches with fondness at the sight of her. “I brought more,” he tells her, tugging gently at the corner of the blanket, and she lets him unravel her.

 

They rearrange the bed with the additional blankets and sink back into each other, pressed as close together as possible. It’s slightly warmer now, but not comfortable.

 

“I almost miss the Dead Zone,” Emori whispers through chattering teeth, and he laughs even though it’s not funny.

 

* * *

 

Luckily, Bellamy’s faith seems to be well-placed. The heating is back on by morning.

 

But it’s a short-lived victory; there are other problems to solve. The water purifier is out, which is equally, if not more, worrying. There’s a good amount of already-purified water still stored in the tank, just like Monty predicted, but it won’t last them more than about a week, even with strict rationing. After the heating is fixed, Raven spends all her time trying to get the machine up and running again. Monty offers to help, but he’s told to focus on the Algae Farm. They need food just as much as they need water.

 

Murphy also gets roped into algae farm duty. He and Harper work as Monty’s hands, moving as directed. Unfortunately, neither of them turn out to be particularly skilled farmers. Monty has to repeat his directions several times before they carry them out correctly. Half of the time, he looks tempted to just push them aside and complete the task himself, regardless of his hands. Murphy never realized Monty had such a short fuse; he wonders if he’s always had one or if it’s new – a gift from their time on Earth, like the way Harper panics when people sneak up behind her or the way Murphy hates closed doors.

 

Raven directs Bellamy to do a sweep of the Ring and create a list of obvious repair needs. They both know she and Monty will have to do their own sweep later, to look with more trained eyes, but it’s a start.

 

The night they spent gathering the blankets together highlights the need for a general inventory, as well as the benefit of keeping everything they do have in one central location, rather than scattered throughout the Ring. When Bellamy brings it up with the others, Emori surprises everyone, including Murphy, by stepping forward and volunteering to gather anything of use together in one place. After all, she points out, scavenging is what she’s good at.

 

Bellamy and Emori designate a room near the Algae Farm as the supply room, and Emori starts gathering. She lines a blanket with a few spare pieces of piping and metal she finds in one of the rooms to weigh the edges of the blanket down and create a simple framework, then uses strips of fabric cut from another blanket to tie the weights in securely. Once finished, she drags it along the floor as a makeshift cart and piles it high with supplies.

 

Murphy bursts with pride when he sees it, and he loves the little “cart” a ridiculous amount, more than he’s ever loved any other object since he carved his initials in a piece of twisted metal and called it his almost a year ago. But this is a different fondness; his attachment to his knife had been about the pure joy of finally claiming something as his own possession, writing his name on it to keep others from taking it. He loves the “cart” because it is so perfectly Emori – smart and clever and inventive. She’s the most impressive woman he’s ever met, and the unfamiliarity of life in space doesn’t keep her from doing her given job effectively. It’s a relief to see how well she adjusts, both to space and to living in a community, as little as theirs is.

 

Emori also uses the job as an excuse to visit every nook and cranny of her new home. Later, she drags Murphy back to certain rooms to ask the significance or purpose of them. She seems fascinated with everything. Fear and uncertainty still linger in her eyes and taint every question she asks, but the fascination outweighs it, and she seems determined to focus on anything but the negatives. It’s new for her, and clearly still hard, but she’s trying to be optimistic about things.

 

“This is our second chance at a home,” she confides in him on the fourth night in the Ark, tracing shapes into his skin with her right hand. The glove is gone, and he loves the way it looks in the half-light filtering in from the hallway, the way the light catches on it and splinters out into one-of-a-kind shadows. “I want to make it as wonderful as possible.”

 

There’s very little Murphy likes about space, and even less he likes about the Ark, but he learns to swallow his complaints for her sake.

 

But only in front of her – he complains as much as he wants to in the Algae Farm, much to the obvious annoyance of both Harper and Monty, though he knows they don’t feel much differently than him. Not a single Ark-borne kid holds much affection for the Ark – with the exception of Raven, maybe, who loves space enough for the fondness to rub off a little on the Ark, as well.

 

Still, Murphy tries to smother his hatred and his fear, and make the most of things for Emori’s sake. If she wants to make the Ring her home, he’ll make it her home – he’d give her anything.

 

* * *

 

Five days after their return to space, Murphy wanders through the Ring with no real destination in mind. For the first time since they’ve arrived, he finds himself with free time. According to Monty, they’ve done as much as they can currently do on the Algae Farm, and though they’ll have to tend to it every day, for the moment they can all take a break.

 

He’s unsure what to do with himself now that he’s not needed. Emori is probably somewhere deep in the Ring, picking through rooms. The thought of returning to their own room isn’t very appealing when he knows she won’t be there – there’s not much else of interest in there.

 

For a moment, he considers going to find Raven – which surprises him, at first, because it’s so new a thing to want to spend time with her – but wisely decides that she wouldn’t appreciate the distraction. Look at that, he thinks, I’m growing.

 

He’s just starting to consider trying to track down Emori when his name echoes through the corridor. Murphy turns to see Bellamy hurrying towards him, shepherding an extremely annoyed looking Echo along without actually touching her. She’s holding a bloody rag against her lower left arm.

 

Murphy stops walking and waits for them to catch up.

 

“Echo cut herself. We’re headed towards Medical to fix it,” Bellamy explains as they near. “Can you come help?” He doesn’t actually wait for an answer, and, when they reach Murphy, they pass him and keep walking. Murphy shrugs and falls into line behind them, watching the silent argument between Bellamy and Echo with amusement. Bellamy’s in full mothering mode, which Murphy’s never really seen before, directing Echo towards Medical, telling her to keep pressure on her wound. Echo looks just a few seconds and comments away from stabbing him with the knife Murphy knows she keeps tucked in her boot.

 

“This is not the first time I’ve been injured,” she hisses.

 

Bellamy just huffs in reply.

 

“What’d you do?” Murphy asks her, more curious than concerned.

 

“We were moving a piece of metal plating that must have fallen when the Ark left. One of the sides was sharper than expected,” Bellamy explains as they enter Medical. He waves a hand towards one of the beds, and Echo takes a seat. “You said we had disinfectant, right?” he asks as he rifles through the wrong cabinet.

 

Murphy pulls the disinfectant out of the correct cabinet and shakes it in the air for Bellamy to see. Then he goes to Echo’s side and leans in to see her wound better.

 

Echo pulls the rag away from the wound to reveal a deep and ugly gash down the inside of her lower arm. It’s bleeding steadily, and the skin is jagged and torn, piercing deep into her arm. It looks painful, but Echo hardly shows it, her face just as calm as ever, though there’s a slight pinch to her eyebrows.

 

Murphy whistles. “Shiiiit,” he says, dragging the word out, then capping it with a sharp _t_.

 

“Not helpful,” Bellamy says.  

 

Murphy ignores him. “It’s pretty deep. We need to stop the bleeding,” he says. “Or disinfecting it isn’t going to help much.”

 

“Yes,” Echo says. “You need to…” She hesitates, stuck on the word. “I don’t know the word in English. You…as if with clothes.” She pantomimes sewing.

 

“Sew?” Bellamy voices.

 

Murphy nods. “Yeah, Emori and I had to do that to each other a few times.”

 

“At camp we usually cauterized the wounds,” Bellamy says, and Murphy ignores the slight sting that still hits every time he thinks of the delinquent camp. “With a hot piece of metal.”

 

Echo nods. “Yes, that also works.”

 

“I don’t think we can get anything hot enough,” Murphy argues. Space stations are generally made to be as nonflammable as possible. It’s actually fairly difficult to start a fire on one; Murphy knows. “Sewing’s our best bet. I’ve done it before. But we don’t have a needle.”

 

Bellamy’s eyes light up. “Wait, I think I know where to find one. Clean the wound, I’ll be right back,” he orders, then hurries out of the room, disappearing around the corner.

 

Echo and Murphy watch him leave, then eye each other warily. A heavy tension settles in the room with Bellamy’s absence. They haven’t spent much time together since getting to the Ring – or any, really – and their last interaction wasn’t exactly friendly.

  
Murphy wets a rag – a new one, since the one Echo carried with her to Medical is soaked with blood – and watches her out of the corner of his eyes as he wrings it out. He’s not really worried she’ll attack him – she’s been careful, since they arrived, to stay out of everyone’s way, and he doubts she’d risk making enemies in a place she’s clearly so terrified of – but he doesn’t trust her, and he’s intimately familiar with the desire for revenge. He did threaten her life, after all.

 

“I’m not going to apologize for trying to take your suit,” he tells her as he steps towards her. The atmosphere of the room grows heavier and settles on them almost painfully. Echo tenses.

 

Murphy reaches a hand out for her arm. She hesitates, drawing it slightly closer as she eyes him, but after a long, tense moment, she yields. Despite his mistrust, he holds her arm gently as he wipes away the blood as best he can with the wound still bleeding, then presses the rag against her skin. “Hold this,” he directs her, and grabs a new one – they’re starting to run out of clean ones.

 

“It was for the person you love,” Echo says as he soaks a portion of the rag with moonshine. Her voice is calm, still, but softer than he’s heard it before and weighted with something heavy and personal. Murphy is confused at first, unsure what conversation she’s continuing, and she elaborates, “Trying to take my suit – it was to protect someone you love. I understand.”

 

She smiles slightly, the edges of her mouth curling up, and it softens her face into something less stony and sharp. He realizes that in the five days they’ve been here, he’s never once seen her smile. “I wouldn’t have let you take it,” she continues, “But I understand.”

 

Murphy doesn’t know what to say for a moment. He carefully screws the cap back on the moonshine bottle, using it as an excuse to keep quiet while he finds his footing.

 

It had been easier to start thinking of the others as his allies – as his people, even. Bellamy, Monty, and Harper were familiar, even with the past bad blood between them, and despite everything, they were always united by the dropship. Raven had become a friend during their time on the island, though he’s sometimes still unsure how, and he trusted Emori with every fiber of his being.

 

But he had never thought of Echo as anything but an enemy. She was a stranger, an unfamiliar grounder, and Ice Nation at that – who he hasn’t had great experiences with in the past, to say the least – and she had only helped them to save her own life. Not that he can fault her for that, since it’s exactly what he would have done, but he also knows the kind of things he’s capable of; he trusts her less for the similarity. And on top of everything, he has a hard time forgetting that at one time her safety threatened Emori’s.

 

But then he thinks of how skittish and scared he’s seen her since they landed, of Bellamy, once so quick to sell others down the river if it made things easier for himself, willing to give her a seat in the rocket, and of Emori, trying desperately to make this place the home they were denied in the bunker.

 

Fuck it, he thinks. They can’t be enemies.

 

“Good,” he replies finally, a smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth. “You’d be an idiot if you sacrificed your life for someone you didn’t know.” The tension thins, not quite gone but close to breaking. “I wasn’t happy about it,” he continues, “But I understand.”

 

It feels like they’ve come to an agreement. The tension settles into something almost comfortable. Murphy thinks that if Echo weren’t bleeding and he didn’t have his hands full, they might have shaken hands. It’s a relief; contrary to popular belief, he doesn’t actually like making enemies – he’s just good at it.

 

Murphy takes hold of her arm again and gestures for her to move the rag away.

 

“This is going to hurt like a bitch,” he warns her, with his absolute best bedside manner.

 

“I can handle it,” Echo says stiffly, almost offended.

 

He quirks an eyebrow, but continues without comment, carefully pressing the rag to her wound. Echo’s entire body goes taunt, but she doesn’t make a sound. The hand on her uninjured arm grips the side of the bed tightly, trembling slightly, knuckles white with pressure.

 

Murphy holds the rag to her skin long after he thinks it’s been disinfected, but with the way it keeps steadily bleeding, he’s afraid to remove it again. Echo stays strong and steady throughout. Murphy hopes Bellamy appears with a needle soon.

 

“It is a good thing Clarke was there,” Echo says suddenly, her voice shockingly level. “On the island,” she clarifies, “Or I would have killed you.” It takes him a moment to realize it’s a joke – or at least a truthful statement intended as a joke. Her eyes spark with amusement. “I saw how you fight; you need lessons.”

 

He’s not offended since he knows it’s true. Emori’s told him the same thing, and it’s pretty obvious that he keeps losing fights.

 

“What, are you volunteering to teach me?” he asks with a grin.

 

The humor in her eyes fades into something more vulnerable. “It would give me something to do,” she admits bitterly.

 

Murphy doesn’t know what to say to that, but luckily, he doesn’t have to. Bellamy finally bursts back into Medical.

 

“Got it,” he says triumphantly and raises his hands to show them a metal can, shaking it slightly to rattle the contents. He digs through it as he steps closer to them and pulls a sewing needle out for Murphy to see. “Will this work?”

 

“Yup,” Murphy replies, popping the _p_. He hands Bellamy the bottle of moonshine to disinfect the needle and takes the can from him to look through. “How’d you know where to find this?” he asks as he searches for thread to use.

 

There isn’t any new thread in the can, just bits and pieces of recycled material – strips of fabric pulled from old clothing, a few bundles of string that was probably ripped from old seams. He locates a bundle of fairly sturdy blue string that should work.

 

“My mom was a seamstress in factory station,” Bellamy explains, and Murphy is momentarily thrown by the realization that this is the most he’s ever truly known about Bellamy. “A lot of the supplies were kept there, which doesn’t do us any good, but they always kept needle and thread in Guard Station to patch uniforms.” He holds a hand out for the string, then expertly threads the now disinfected needle while he adds, “Octavia and I would help her with orders.”

 

Murphy almost laughs. Big, bad, leader of the delinquents Bellamy was a seamstress. “That’s a little different from a guard,” he chuckles. It’s funnier to him than it should be, but he just can’t wrap his head around it. The profession is so at odds with the Bellamy he knows.

 

But he’s starting to wonder how much this Bellamy is actually like the Bellamy he used to know.

 

“I actually was training to be a guard for a bit,” Bellamy clarifies. “That’s how I knew how to get into Guard Station.”

 

He hands the needle back to Murphy, who raises an eyebrow in question. “Shouldn’t you do it? You apparently have the most experience with sewing.”

 

“Yeah, clothes, not people,” Bellamy argues. “You have more experience with that. And I heard you did a good job with Monty’s hands.”

 

Murphy sighs and bites out an irritable _fine_ as he takes the needle, but a warm feeling of pride spreads through him at the subtle compliment. Even after everything, it feels good to have Bellamy trust him with something.

 

Echo pulls the rag away as Murphy nears her, eyeing the needle warily. It’s the first time she’s looked anything other than perfectly calm through the whole ordeal.

 

“Hold her skin together while I sew,” Murphy instructs, and Bellamy hurries to do so, trying to be both gentle and firm at the same time. Echo winces slightly, then grips the table tighter, bracing herself, and schools her features once more.

 

The stitches Murphy makes are uneven, but his movements are quick and confident. The first time Emori asked him to patch up the bleeding cut on her shoulder that sat just out of her reach, his hand had trembled the entire time; he’d been terrified of hurting her, even though he knew it would do more good than harm in the long run. Emori, much like Echo, had sat patiently and calmly while he worked; she was covered in badly-healed scars from suturing wounds, either done by Otan or herself, and the act no longer phased her.

 

Murphy had to stitch her wounds a few more times after that, because sometimes it was easier to just stitch up a cut than to waste bandages or risk infection. His hand shook less the second time, then not at all the third.

 

His stitches still aren’t pretty, though, and he knows they will leave an ugly, uneven scar. Emori leaves neat, even stitches with a hand steady from years of practice; she would have been better at this, if they had had the time to track her down.

 

Then again, as careful as Echo has been to stay away from anyone but Bellamy, Emori has been even more careful to stay away from Echo. When the group gathers and she and Echo are forced into the same space, Emori is careful to stand with Murphy between them, less as an actual protective shield and more as a way to disappear from Echo’s view. Emori doesn’t necessarily trust anyone on the Ring aside from Murphy and Raven, but he can tell that, like him, she trusts Echo the least. He doesn’t blame her; they both know how most grounders view mutants, after all. Emori might not have been willing to stitch the Azgeda warrior up, even if they had found her.

 

When he’s finished the stitches, as neat and tidy as he can get them, Murphy leans down and severs the string with his teeth. Bellamy lets go of Echo’s arm and steps back while she cleans the remaining blood off her arm.

 

Murphy wraps the rest of the string back into a little bundle and places it back in the can to use again in the future – because he’s sure they will. Two injuries already in less than a week. He has a bad feeling about the amount of supplies they have.

 

“Don’t lift anything heavy or do much with your arm for a while,” he tells Echo. “You’ll rip the stitches, and I’ll have to do it again.”

 

Echo nods, but her face pinches, and he can tell she’s unhappy with the order to take it easy. She hesitates before leaving for a moment, eyes flicking between the other two, and he can’t tell if she wants to say something or she’s waiting for Bellamy to leave so she can take up her role as his second shadow again. But after a moment, she turns and leaves the room without another word.

 

Bellamy lays a hand on Murphy’s shoulder. “Good job,” he tells him, and his voice is sincere, maybe almost proud, and Murphy’s chest fills with warmth and the comfortable, heavy weight of satisfaction; it tingles in him pleasantly, and he loves feeling accomplished and needed. He hates it, too – hates that he’s still so stupidly pleased to receive Bellamy’s praise, that he still puts weight in Bellamy’s approval and respect, even if it’s lessened since they first landed and he half-thought Bellamy hung the fucking moon.

 

He also feels relieved. It soothes something in him, some sticky, nagging fear that insists that if he doesn’t make himself useful, he’ll be discarded. It’s a silly fear, because he doesn’t really think they’d chuck him out the airlock, but it’s rooted deep in him. He’s felt desperate to be needed for so long – at least since Jaha, but maybe sooner, maybe since he realized being useful was the difference between staying locked up or being free. It doesn’t matter if people like you as long as they need you.

 

As long as you prove you’re irreplaceable.

 

Murphy knows he’s not irreplaceable. Emori can stitch up wounds better than he can and it’s not like the others couldn’t have figured out how to fix Monty’s hands even if Murphy hadn’t been there. He doesn’t know how to handle mechanics or grow food. He is needed on the Ring, but only in an all-hands-on-deck sort of way, because there’s so few of them and everyone has to lend a hand if they want to survive.

 

He’s hit suddenly with an overwhelming desperation to prove his worth.

 

He looks around at Medical as Bellamy leaves the room, eyeing the nearly empty bottle of moonshine sitting on a medical cart, the can of thread and needles on the bed, the cabinet where he’s grouped the other supplies.

 

Well.

 

A real inventory would be a good start.

 

 


	3. Inventory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the late update, guys. A lot of crazy stuff happened in real life, and I also had to spent some serious time figuring out where exactly this story was headed. The great thing is I now have a much better idea of where to take this story and updates should come faster, life willing.
> 
> Thanks again to everyone who left such wonderful comments! I really enjoyed reading all of them!
> 
>  
> 
> And a million thanks again to my amazing editor, infernalandmortal, who made both this chapter and the story as a whole much stronger than it would be without her!

 

Creating an inventory for Medical turns out to be fairly easy – mostly because there really aren’t that many supplies left.

 

Murphy works on it in between shifts at the algae farm. By the end of their first week aboard the Ring, he’s managed to gather everything into one cabinet closer to the door and mentally tally what they have.

 

The results are disheartening, to say the least.

 

They have four rags, two meager rolls of gauze, half a roll of tape, the needle and thread Bellamy found, a pair of tweezers, three scalpels of varying sizes, a bit of plastic tubing he isn’t sure the purpose of, and about a shot of moonshine left. Murphy estimates they used about a fourth of a roll of gauze on Monty’s hands already.

 

These supplies need to last five years. Ironically, the thought nearly makes him sick with worry.

 

Along with the other supplies, Murphy finds five different medications left in Medical. The only one he’s at all familiar with is Morphine, of which they have only two doses. He adds a mental note to his internal inventory list – _“Don’t use unless someone’s dying.”_

 

The names of the other four medications are unfamiliar, and the labels give no indication of what they treat. Murphy wishes again that Clarke was here. Maybe they can get in contact with the bunker now that Praimfaya’s passed, and he can talk to Abby – he’ll have to check with Raven.

 

But there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to contact the bunker at all in the next five years, and the medicine they have on hand might just save someone’s life in the future. He refuses to let it go to waste – the very thought makes his blood run cold and his stomach twist with nausea. He’ll just have to figure out some other way to identify them.

 

Another thorough search of Medical reveals no papers, notes, or files of any sort. Murphy isn’t very surprised, since paper has always been a rarity aboard the Ark. Instead, he finds a tablet stashed away in a drawer. It has a strip of duct tape stuck to the back, and “Medical” written across it in large, blocky letters.

 

He’s only vaguely familiar with tablets – and only in theory, since he’s never used one before. Like everything on the Ark, the number of tablets was limited. They were reserved only for important personnel – and that’s a list Murphy’s never been included on. He knows, in theory, that it’s possible to keep a digital record of their inventory on it, and that there’s a possibility there are files identifying the medicine stored on it – he just doesn’t have any clue how to find them.

 

In the algae farm the next day, Murphy checks Monty’s hands. He figures he’s the best one to judge their progress, considering his own history with burns. Monty must agree, because he lets him look them over without protest.

 

It’s now officially their second week aboard the Ring, and the burns are healing slowly but steadily. Most of the blisters have disappeared completely, and the vivid red color is gradually fading into a lighter pink as they scar. The skin is rough to the touch, now, probably permanently warped, but according to Monty, the pain is fading. Still, he flinches when Murphy applies too much pressure.

 

Now that the open blisters are gone, Murphy thinks it’s safe to remove the gauze. Briefly he wonders if it can be reused, before a glance at the stains vetoes that idea completely – it’s not worth the chance of infection.

 

“How much movement do you have?” he asks as he carefully turns the hands over to look at them from all angles. From what he can remember, they seem to be healing normally. The hands will scar pretty terribly, but the pain and tenderness should disappear with time – a couple weeks if he remembers correctly.  If the radiation doesn’t cause any further issues, Monty should be fine.

 

“I’m not sure. I’ve been trying _not_ to move them,” Monty says. He gently pulls his hands away from Murphy and tries to form a fist with both hands. He winces as he moves them, but the movements themselves don’t appear hindered. “They hurt still, but I think I can move them.”

 

“You’re going to have some fucking badass scars,” Murphy says, “But the burns are healing normally. At least, they’re healing the same way mine did, so I think they’re healing normally.”

 

“Very reassuring,” Monty says, grinning wryly. There’s something almost harsh about Monty that Murphy doesn’t remember from before he left camp. Something almost sharp. Even his grin now seems just a little too severe.

 

“Does he still need to keep them bandaged?” Harper asks. She’s hovering near them, a little closer than Murphy would like, watching his movements like a hawk. Clearly, she hasn’t grown any more comfortable with him in the time they’ve been working together. He’s just glad she’s mostly hid her distrust while they’ve worked on the farm, because her eyes are currently burning holes in his back, and it’s not a pleasant feeling.

 

“No. Let ‘em breathe,” he instructs, mimicking Abby’s nearly decade-old instructions. “Besides, we can’t waste more bandages on you.”

 

From the corner of his eye, Murphy sees Harper narrow her eyes at him. Her distaste sits clearly on her face. _Fuck off, Harper,_ he wants to say, but wisely holds his tongue. He’s not being a dick this time, he’s just being smart – if someone cuts an artery and starts bleeding out tomorrow, they’re going to need bandages way more than Monty and his burnt hands do.

 

Luckily, Monty understands, and only nods at him as he continues to slowly flex his fingers and test his range of movement.

 

Murphy grabs the tablet from Medical that he brought with him, and holds it up for Monty to see. “I found this tablet in Medical. Any idea how to open the files on it?”

 

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Monty says. “But no. I’m good at machines, not computers. You should ask Raven.”

 

* * *

  


Murphy finds Raven in the hallway outside of the algae farm.

 

The wall panels in front of her have been removed, and she’s buried halfway inside the wall, in an incredibly uncomfortable looking position to account for her bad leg, which is sticking out straight to one side. The back of her tank top is drenched in sweat, and she works frantically with something out of Murphy’s sight.

 

“What are you working on now?” he asks as he comes to stand behind her. From what he can see, the inside of the wall is a mess of wires and pipes.

 

“Trying to fix the heating,” she grunts, her words muffled.

 

His brow furrows. “I thought you did that already.”

 

“I did. For us to be comfortable. The problem is the Algae Farm. Monty’s worried if we can’t make it warmer in there, the algae won’t bloom.”

 

It’s the first he’s heard about a potential problem with the farm. His heart sinks. “And then we all starve,” he adds helpfully.

 

Raven gives half a laugh from inside the wall.  “Exactly,” she says dryly. “We gained a bit of time with the farm with one less person, but not much. Our rations are only going to last so long.”

 

Well, at least they don’t have to worry about identifying the medicine they have – not if they’re going to starve before they have a chance to get sick.

 

“Shouldn’t the algae farm be heated correctly already? Go-Sci’s always had an algae farm.”

 

“Should be,” Raven grunts. “But it isn’t. I’m guessing – hand me that wrench, would you?” He finds the wrench she’s motioning at and places it in her flailing hand, and she continues explaining as she starts working at a bolt, “– that the Ark separating knocked out these extra heaters.”

 

“Nice of everyone on the Ark to fuck us over one last time, huh?” he says, running his hand through his hair, tugging on the ends in frustration.

 

Fuck.

 

The sound of pounding footsteps echoes down the hallway. Bellamy storms around the corner, a tornado of agitated energy. Murphy fights the urge to turn and run, because usually when Bellamy looks like that, it doesn’t end well for him.

 

But Bellamy barely pays him any attention. Instead, his eyes catch on Raven, and he zeroes in on her. “I’ve been trying to find you,” he says, voice as agitated as the rest of him.

 

He still looks terrible – if anything, he’s looking worse with each day that passes on the Ring. His face is paler than usual, and his hair is a tangled, chaotic mess. Nobody is adjusting to living on the Ark that well – Murphy’s slept less this past week than he has since the A.L.I.E. incident – but Raven and Bellamy are the worst of all of them. They’re holding the stress and responsibility of everything on their shoulders, and he’s pretty sure one of them is going to collapse underneath it soon.

 

Murphy thinks Bellamy probably hasn’t gotten over Clarke yet, either, but that’s just a guess. It’s not like Bellamy’s said her name since she died.

 

“Why haven’t you been eating?” Bellamy demands.

 

“I have been eating,” Raven argues from inside the wall.

 

Bellamy sighs. His entire body shakes with it. “No, you haven’t, Raven. I’m keeping track of our rations, and you haven’t taken any for two days.”

 

“Can’t say I blame her,” Murphy cuts in. “It’s not like any of it tastes good.”

 

Bellamy turns to glare at him. He looks angry in a way Murphy hasn’t seen in a long time, and he recalls suddenly how hard Bellamy can punch. “Shut up, Murphy,” he growls, and Murphy raises his hands in mock surrender.

 

He takes that as his cue to exit. It’s not like Raven can take the time to figure out the tablet with their food supply at risk, and he’s not willing to get caught in the middle of a fight between Bellamy and Raven. The growing sounds of their argument follow him down the hall as he heads back to his room.

 

* * *

  


It seems that it’s not just Bellamy and Raven - everyone on board the Ring is growing increasingly irritated. Emori comes back to their room that night on-edge and angry. She tries to hide her mood from him, but he can see how tense she is even from a distance, and he knows her well enough by now to recognize that the turn of her lips and the rigidness of her shoulders means she’s upset about something.

 

She’s good at secrets, though – especially with things she doesn’t want to talk about – and she does an excellent job acting like she’s okay. She greets him with a smile and a kiss like usual, and asks casually about the algae farm as she starts removing her many layers for bed.

 

Murphy walks up behind her and grabs her elbow, spinning her around gently to face him. She complies, raising an eyebrow at him in silent question. “Hey,” he asks. “What’s wrong?” He fears the worst. The Ring. Space. Being trapped.

 

He can’t fix any of those things.

 

“Nothing, I’m fine,” she starts to argue, but he cuts her off with a gentle shake of her shoulders.

 

“Emori,” he says, sternly. She isn’t supposed to keep secrets from him. “You can tell me. What is it?”

 

Emori sighs, glancing away towards the door of their room. It’s propped open, like usual, and he’s lucky that their room is tucked away in a section of the Ring that the others rarely go, and that Emori isn’t incredibly concerned with modesty, aside from her hand, and that she’s willing to put up with his request at all. It’s hard to breathe when the door is shut.

 

“It’s the Azgedan,” she says, turning back to face him. Her face is pinched, mouth twisted in a frown. He brings a hand to her face, rubs his thumb across the rough, scarred skin under her eye, as if he could smooth the worry away. Emori tilts her head towards his hand. The corners of her mouth tick up into a smile.

 

Her words register, and anger sparks in his chest. “What the hell did she do?” he growls. It feels like a betrayal after their conversation the other day; he wants to find Echo and demand to know what she’s playing at – he’d thought, perhaps naively, that the peace they’d made with each other included Emori.

 

“She didn’t do anything,” Emori murmurs. He can tell she doesn’t want to talk about it, but he doesn’t care. If there’s something bothering her, he wants to know about it. “She and Bellamy started working in the supply room. Bellamy wants to organize everything I find and make a list of what we have, and the Azgedan is helping him. She’s there every time I bring Bellamy more supplies.”

 

Murphy waits for her to add something, and when she doesn’t continue, he asks, “Well, did she say something?”

 

“She didn’t have to _say_ anything,” Emori says, and it rushes out of her like a dam breaking –exasperated, angry. Hurt. “I know what she thinks of me. I know what _Azgeda_ thinks of people like me.” She spits the clan name with venom, and makes a face, like even the taste of the word sits unpleasantly in her mouth. “They’re worse than Trikru. Or the others. Azgeda doesn’t just banish mutants. They _kill_ mutants.”

 

Murphy’s stomach twists with fear. He pictures, suddenly, Echo creeping silently through their open door at night, slitting Emori’s throat with the knife she carries. He imagines her overpowering Emori in the supply room or in some hidden corner of the Ring where the rest of them aren’t around to see. Bellamy told him once that Echo was a spy and a warrior. He saw her fight on the island. Emori can protect herself, but Echo is trained, and Azgeda, he knows, is vicious.

 

He thinks of Ontari and her cruelty. An image comes to mind: Echo holding Emori’s severed head, covered in her blood.

 

The image knocks the air from his lungs, and fear clutches at his heart and squeezes. The room spins. He feels sick.

 

It was so stupid of him to trust Echo – so stupid to stop thinking of her as a threat. Hasn’t he learned by now not the let his guard down? Hasn’t he learned not to trust people?

 

He shouldn’t have stitched her arm up. It would have been so easy to just let her bleed. The wound was deep, and she had lost a lot of blood already by the time he saw her – how much longer would it have taken for it to be fatal? He could have done it, somehow, without Bellamy knowing. It would have looked like an accident.

 

Emori would stay safe.

 

Except Echo’s not going to try to hurt Emori.

 

Even in his fear and anger, he knows it’s true. Echo values her own safety more than she might care about attacking Emori, no matter what she thinks of her. Most of the group already doesn’t trust her; doing anything to hurt Emori and further break that trust is a risk he knows Echo won’t take – she’s too smart for that. She’s too much like him.

 

Besides, she won’t do anything to anger Bellamy. Bellamy may not personally care much for Emori either way, but attacking one of their group isn’t something he’s going to stand for. At least not now. At least not this new, older Bellamy. Murphy tries not to think of the Dropship camp.

 

It doesn’t matter what Echo might have done to Emori on Earth – at least here in the Ring, in their little group, Emori’s safe.

 

Still, he can’t help but ask, “Do you think she’ll hurt you?”

 

Emori purses her lips as she thinks it over, then shakes her head. “No. I don’t think she’ll risk it.”

 

“I can talk with Bellamy,” Murphy offers. “See if he can give her a new job somewhere else.”

 

Emori shakes her head. “John, no. I don’t want to cause problems.”

 

“It’s _Echo_ causing the problems,” he argues back, angry on her behalf.

 

“John.” Emori lifts her own hand to his cheek, mirroring his position. Her thumb strokes tenderly at his lower cheek, catches on the rough stubble growing there, then smooths over it. “Please.”

 

Every part of him wants to continue this fight – because he’s fighting _for_ her. For her honor. For Echo to respect her. But her eyes are wide and vulnerable, pleading with him to drop it. He knows she believes that any fight between her and Echo will be taken as her fault – that _she’ll_ be labeled as the problem in the group. Based on what happened on the island, he’s not even sure she’s wrong.

 

She doesn’t want to give anyone a chance to kick her out again. He understands that, even if it kills him to let Echo get away with her prejudice. God. He can’t believe he helped her. He can’t believe he started to like her.

 

Murphy sighs, yielding finally. “I don’t like her looking at you like that,” he mutters as one last argument.

 

Emori smiles softly. Her thumb keeps tracing circles over his cheek. “I can handle it. I’ve been looked at like that my whole life.”

 

That’s even worse, he thinks. He knows what it’s like to have people look at you like you’re worthless, how it stings and chips away at you.

 

Murphy takes her left hand in his. She lost her glove when they changed into the radiation suits. Since they’ve landed, she’s made a new wrap from the loose fabric of her shirt. He kind of hates it, even though he knows she still isn’t comfortable exposing her hand to anyone but him.

 

Sometimes she’s still not even comfortable letting him see it.

 

Gently, he pulls the wrapping away and studies the warped form that’s exposed – the long, twisting fingers, the distorted shape. He rubs his thumb over the back of her hand, then brings it to his mouth to kiss.

 

“Badass,” he says, and Emori smiles, exasperated, rolling her eyes to the ceiling as if he’s told a joke and she’s humoring him. She turns her head away from him, towards the wall, and he can tell she’s uncomfortable, that part of her is looking for an escape from this conversation. “Beautiful,” he adds.

 

She whips her head back to face him, loose hair flying with the force of her turn. Her eyebrows are downturned now, her eyes narrowed, and he sees that they’re glistening and red-ringed. “It is not,” she argues, voice harsh, almost angry – like he’s lied to her, and she won’t stand for it.

 

“It is,” Murphy argues. He’s not great with words, not good at compliments, but he wants her to know this. He thinks she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen – and that includes every part of her. “You’re beautiful.” Then because he just can’t help himself, because it bubbles up and out of him like an overflowing cup, “I love you.”

 

There’s a pause. Emori stares at him. He realizes, with a growing sense of dread, that he’s never said that to her out loud, even if he’s thought it nearly every day for weeks now – even if he screamed it in the lab for the whole world to hear when he thought she was going to die.

 

The moment hovers on uncertainty. He suddenly doesn’t know if she’ll say it back.

 

Then Emori lunges forward, her mouth colliding roughly with his. Her hands, both of them, pull away from his grip to land securely on either side of his face, holding him steady while she pushes forward, as if she’s trying her best to sink into him and become one. “I love you,” she breathes out between kisses, and Murphy pushes forward to kiss her back. He uses his now free hand to clutch at her waist, at her sides, finally landing at the back of her head, tangling in her loose hair. He tastes salt on her mouth and knows that if he pulls away, he’ll see tears on her face.

                                                                                                                   

He does pull away from her – not to see her crying, but to grab her hands again and tug her eagerly towards their bed.

  


* * *

 

 

Halfway through their second week, Emori finds a bottle of alcohol stashed in the Ring.

 

To boost morale, Bellamy decides to gather everyone together for dinner and pass it around.  It’s good news for everyone, even if they’re not quite sure whether they’re celebrating or drinking away their sorrows.

 

The past week has been hard. Partially because getting the Ring back in habitable conditions takes a lot of effort, but also because everyone’s still adjusting – or readjusting – to life on the Ark.

 

And a lot of people are mourning.

 

Personally, Murphy doesn’t really have anyone to mourn on Earth. He made it up here with the only person he really still cares about, but coming back up to the Ark has reawakened old ghosts; part of him feels like he’s mourning his parents all over again.

 

The pragmatic side of him, the side that’s kept him alive this long, wants him to argue with Bellamy to set aside the alcohol for Medical, since their disinfectant is running low. But the majority of him just wants to get drunk and forget he’s on the Ark for a bit.

 

He sides with that part of himself.

 

It’s weird – eating together. So far, they’ve all been taking their rations at different times, eating when they have free time in between their jobs. They’ve gone down to two rations per day, to make sure they last until the algae farm grows. Murphy usually eats his first during the middle of the day in the farm, then his second at night with Emori. They’ve never all sat around like this and eaten together.

 

Conversation starts slowly. It’s clear that even though they’ve been living together for over a week now, they aren’t used to being around each other. Murphy makes sure to sit himself between Echo and Emori, and he glances frequently at the Azgedan as he eats. She looks the same as she had in Medical – uncomfortable, scared. Out of her element. She hardly even looks at Emori.

 

The more the bottle gets passed around the circle, the easier conversation flows - still, it feels stilted and awkward. Raven, Bellamy, Harper, and Monty do most of the talking; they’re all familiar and comfortable with each other, even if they’re all struggling with whatever happened on Earth. Echo keeps quiet, and Emori and Murphy mostly talk amongst themselves.

 

Occasionally, Raven calls across the circle to Emori and Murphy, as if she’s trying to pull them into the others’ conversation. She doesn’t fully succeed.

 

Surprisingly, Harper tries to talk to Emori. She won’t address Murphy, and hardly even looks at him, but she seems genuinely interested in getting to know Emori. Murphy wonders why she’s so willing to trust her if she’s still so wary of him, but figures it might be because of how easily Raven accepts her. Harper seems to trust her judgement.

 

Whatever the reason, he’s glad to see someone besides himself and Raven treating her with kindness and acceptance. He glances over towards Echo again, but she’s looking down at her food.

 

When the bottle is nearly empty, Bellamy clears his throat, and the room falls silent. He raises the bottle in the air, and starts to speak, but his voice breaks on the first word, splinters into the air in broken pieces. He clears his throat and tries again. “To Clarke.”

 

It’s the first time he’s said her name since they landed, and it’s like his speaking it aloud breaks some unspoken agreement they’ve all settled into. Something in the air breaks free.

 

“To Clarke,” the room echoes. Even Murphy joins in. There are a lot of things he still hates Clarke for, but he and Emori wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for her. None of them would. It’s worth a moment of remembrance, at least.

 

Bellamy takes a swig of the bottle, then passes it on, nearly dropping it before Raven can get a hold of it. She takes her own hearty gulp and passes it on to Monty.

 

Monty pauses when it comes to him, then mimics Bellamy’s earlier move, holding the bottle high.  “To Jasper,” he says, and the careful, calm mask he’s kept since they landed finally cracks with pain. The bottle trembles in the air; Murphy knows it isn’t just because of his hands.

 

“To Jasper,” Bellamy, Raven, and Harper echo. Murphy gives a silent nod, not sure he’s allowed to speak up.

 

“To Riley and Bree,” Harper adds before Monty can even pass her the bottle. Her face is heavy with grief, but her voice rings out strong and steady. “To Fox. To Monroe.” She takes a sip and passes the bottle to Emori.

 

“To Sinclair. And Wick,” Raven says. “To – ” her breath hitches, and she breaks off, biting at her lip, tears brimming in her eyes. Her free hand moves almost involuntarily to her collarbone, grasping for something that isn’t there. It closes around nothing. “To Finn,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper.

 

“To Mbege,” Murphy adds quietly, and the eyes of the other delinquents turn to him, surprised. He doesn’t really miss Mbege that much – at least, he doesn’t think about him that often. They weren’t really close, but they were cellmates for seven years, and they were comfortable with each other, and occasionally, he makes a stupid joke and thinks to turn to Mbege for a reaction before he remembers.

 

He was sad when he heard he died. That’s more than he can say about a lot of people.

 

Emori and Echo don’t add any names aloud, but beside him, Murphy hears Emori whisper Otan’s name. Across from him, he sees Echo mouth something silently, her eyes closed.

 

They finish the bottle in silence, and when it’s gone, no one lingers. The circle breaks apart, and their little group scatters into pieces, heading separately to their rooms.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check me out on tumblr at bombshellsandbluebells!


	4. Hunger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The algae farm team takes on a shitty job. Harper and Murphy share a breakdown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, tremendous thanks to my fantastic editor infernalandmortal! She's the absolute best!
> 
> Thank you everyone who has left reviews! I greatly appreciate every single one of you!

During their second week aboard the Ring, Emori finds a small bag of seeds stashed away in one of the rooms, and, instead of taking them to the Supply Room with the rest of what she finds, she takes them straight to Monty.

 

Their possible food problem is sort of an open secret aboard the Ring. Neither Bellamy or Monty have officially announced it to anyone, but it seems to have passed through the group regardless. It lingers now, always, everywhere. Bellamy’s announcement that they were cutting food intake down to two rations a day had been met by everyone with trepidation, but not resistance.

 

Emori fidgets as Monty inspects the seeds. The skin of her forehead is bunched and wrinkled with worry, pinched tight between her dark eyebrows. “Will these grow more food?” she asks, and Murphy can hear the note of fear threaded through her otherwise calm voice, though he doubts Monty or Harper can pick up on it. Emori’s a master of hiding her emotions.

 

“It’s hard to tell,” Monty says. “’I’m not sure what plants they are, exactly, but it doesn’t make sense for anyone on the Ark to keep anything that isn’t edible.” He smiles up at Emori. “It will be good to have something to eat besides just the algae. Thank you.”

 

Emori gives him a half-smile, one corner of her mouth twitching up.

_Great job. I love you,_ Murphy wants to say, because saying it out loud has become addicting in the last few days – maybe because of the way Emori smiles at him afterwards, and maybe because he never thought he was actually capable of it – but he feels self-conscious with Monty and Harper standing there. It’s not like it’s a secret that he loves Emori, but it still feels too intimate a moment to share with anyone else.

 

Instead, he gently grabs her hand as she walks by and squeezes it. “Great job,” he says, and she beams at him, leans forward to peck him on the lips, then leaves the room.

 

He watches her go, and when he turns back to the room, he sees Harper staring at him, her eyes narrowed, her gaze hot and piercing. It feels like he’s being dissected. He glances away awkwardly, letting his eyes fall to the floor. Murphy’s not sure what Harper sees, but, after a moment, she turns away from him without a word.

 

Monty hasn’t paid any attention to the two of them since Emori left. He’s deep in thought, his eyes focused on an empty corner of the room, glancing between it and the seeds in his hands. After a few minutes of silent contemplation, he looks up at the other two watching him expectantly.

 

“Can we plant those?” Murphy asks. “Because I’d personally love a backup in case the algae doesn’t grow.”

 

“Maybe,” Monty says slowly, the gears almost visibly turning in his head. He looks back at the empty corner. “But there’s a problem.” He falls quiet again.

 

Murphy sighs. “No need to drag out the suspense. Just tell us.”

 

Monty breathes in deeply, steadying himself. “Okay, there’s no garden set up in the Ring. We lucked out because the algae farm was already here, but we don’t currently have any way to grow these. We don’t have soil to plant them in.”

 

“So they’re useless,” Murphy concludes, and his body sags with resignation. Of course. Finding a new food option while their current plan is failing is just too good to be true, and the Ring seems determined to do everything it can to kill them. They’re just as fucked as they were the day before.  

 

“Not necessarily,” Monty agues. His hands are clutching at the seeds, holding them tightly – preciously.  Murphy perks up at that, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see Harper beside him grasp onto this kernel of hope, leaning towards Monty eagerly.

 

“Can we create a garden somehow?” she asks.

 

“We can,” Monty says, “but it won’t be easy.” He hesitates, biting at his lip, and Murphy braces himself for the hit. “We have to make manure with our waste.”

 

There’s silence. It seems anticlimactic for just a moment, and then it registers. “Okay, I’m not a great farmer,” Murphy says, “so I might not have understood you correctly. You’re suggesting we use our shit to grow our food?”

 

Monty shrugs. “We did it all the time in Farm Station.”

 

“Well, that’s one thing I could have lived forever without knowing,” Murphy jokes, but there isn’t much humor in it.

 

“The food grown in it is fine,” Monty assures him. “It’s just the farming that’s…” He pauses, and finally lets his features twist with disgust. Still, despite his grimace, he sounds only resigned as he adds, “Not fun.”

 

“Now I see why you put me on farm duty,” Murphy groans, running a hand through his hair. It’s starting to get too long, the ends falling into his eyes often enough to be annoying. “This is payback.”

 

“If that’s true, why am I here?” Harper asks, and her voice is light. It seems like a joke – and not one at Murphy’s expense. He glances at her, and he notices that her lips are quirked up into what might be considered a grin, even if she does seem as repulsed by Monty’s suggestion as Murphy is.

 

“I don’t know, McIntyre,” Murphy replies, grinning back. “It’d be rude to speculate about your relationship problems.”

 

He means it as a joke, but maybe it comes out more biting than he means it to, or just a little too mean to be funny, because Harper’s grin disappears, and her features sharpen once more.

 

“Dick,” she mutters, and it sounds like rejection – like a wall going up again. Well, he tried.

 

“So how do we do this,” Murphy asks, because hell, if it’s between dealing with shit or starving to death, Murphy knows which option he’s picking, even if his stomach does roll just at the thought of it.

 

“I don’t even know if it will work!” Monty exclaims, voice sharp and reedy, and it’s like he becomes a different creature in that moment, one frantic with worry and stress as opposed to his usual calm. His hands clench tight around the seeds. They’ve healed spectacularly well over the two weeks they’ve been here, and though they’re covered in rough, discolored patches of scar tissue, Monty seems to have no problem using them.

 

“There’s too many unknown variables,” he continues. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to compost without the composter from Farm Station, I don’t know what kind of seeds they are or how long they’ll take to grow – it could be just a few weeks or it could be over a month! And who knows if we’ll even be able to grow it here after we compost the manure - and I don’t even know if the algae is going to grow at all now that Raven’s fixed the heaters. These seeds could be an additional source of food once our rations run out or they could be our only option. I don’t know!”

 

Monty’s panic is terrifying.  Up until now, he’s stayed outwardly calm in the face of every challenge, and Murphy realizes that he’s been using him subconsciously as a gauge for how fucked their food situation really is. If Monty’s panicking, things are worse than he thought.

 

Murphy’s not prepared to starve to death. He wasn’t prepared five months ago, and he certainly isn’t now.

 

“Monty,” Harper’s voice is like steel. It’s a firm and sturdy voice, like something that could weather a storm and stay standing, tall and strong. Murphy remembers the small, fragile girl with delicate features he met in the Skybox. Had she always been hiding a steely strength, or had the Earth ripped and pulled it out of her?

 

“What?” Monty snaps back, and it’s meant to sting.

 

Harper takes the hit, but doesn’t flinch. “Work with what you _do_ know,” she says, voice steady.

 

Monty blinks at her, his panic fading slowly away. It's still visible in his eyes, but he no longer seems to be drowning within it. He opens up a drawer and places the bag of seeds carefully inside, then clutches the corners of the drawer and sags against it, letting it take his weight. “Okay,” he says, and already his voice sounds calmer. “Murphy, I need that tablet.”

 

Murphy hurries to go retrieve it from Medical. By the time he returns to the farm, Monty is once again a picture of calm determination. Harper stands beside him, one hand rubbing circles into his back. She pulls back as Murphy enters, giving Monty room to stand as he takes the tablet from him.

 

“Okay,” he says again, pulling open a program to write in, and Murphy makes a note to ask him how later so he can create an official inventory for Medical that isn’t just stored in his head. “If we all keep taking two rations a day,” he says aloud as he jots down numbers, “we’ll be out of food in 17 days. Even if the algae starts growing now, that’s cutting it pretty close, and it isn’t anywhere near enough time to compost the waste and let the seeds grow. Composting with the composter took three weeks – without it, I’m not sure, but we can try to build something similar and hopefully do it in about the same amount of time, adding, let’s say, five days to build it. The seeds will take three or four weeks to grow. Longer, if we’re unlucky.”

 

He does the math silently for a moment, then looks up. “We need to make it at least six more weeks on the rations we have. If nothing’s growing at that point, it doesn’t matter – we’re dead anyway. Bellamy said we have,” he pauses, eyes flicking up towards the ceiling momentarily as he thinks, “238 left as of today. If we go down to one ration a day for the seven of us, we’ll make it to five. But if we go down to one ration each every other day – or one half ration a day – we’ll make it almost 10. And since we won’t have to make it to 10, every few days we can have an additional ration to keep our strength up.”

 

He circles the final number, 68, with his finger, and the heavy weight of what he’s said settles over the room and its occupants.

 

“One ration every other day,” Murphy repeats slowly. “For six weeks.”

 

Monty nods, looking grim but determined. “And we pray the algae is ready in two.”

 

* * *

 

 

When Monty announces the plan to the group that night, the other Ark-born kids take the news with about the same level of concerned resignation as the algae farm team had. They’ve never had to ration so extremely before, but they’re no strangers to going hungry.

 

Murphy remembers a period of about a month when he was ten. A fungus had infected an entire crop of food, and the food supply dropped dangerously low. The entire Ark population had been forced down to one ration a day until the numbers were deemed safe – and even then, it had been a slow process working back up to the standard daily ration amounts.

 

He knows the other delinquents in the room remember that month as well as him, and though that wasn’t nearly as bad as what they’re planning now, the Ark has prepared them all for things like this.

 

Emori takes the news well. Her mouth tightens, and he sees her hand clench tight at her side, her nails biting white crescent moons into her skin, but she only nods, resolute and prepared and far too used to going hungry.

 

Echo, on the other hand, pales as Monty explains, her face drenched white with horror like it so often is with paint. Her eyes, wide and scared, flit around the group. Seeing their resignation, she tries to hide her own terror, but it slips through the cracks in her stony mask – in the sweat beading on her forehead, in the trembling of her body. Murphy can’t find it in himself to care much.

 

She’ll get used to it. Just like they’ve all had to.

 

* * *

 

Monty recruits Raven to help build the composter, since she’s taken care of most of the urgent, life-threatening problems aboard the Ring already. When she meets Monty and Murphy in the supply room, she still looks frazzled and slightly manic, worn thin with exhaustion. Her hair is no longer in its signature ponytail, but pulled back into a messy braid. It’s starting to shimmer in the lights, greasy and unwashed, just like the rest of them. It’s unusual to see her so unkempt and grimy, because even when she was slowly dying in the lab she’d looked clean and put together. It takes Murphy right back to the dropship – the two of them sitting beside each other, filthy, bloody, dying.

 

He shakes that thought away.

 

Raven and Monty pull pieces from the supply room – sheets of loose metal, spare nuts and bolts, even some tools – and Raven congratulates Emori on what she’s managed to scavenge from the Ring. Emori preens from where she stands in the corner, watching Raven and Monty move about with interest.

 

The supply room is impressive. Murphy’s been in it briefly once or twice, but he hasn’t paid much attention to the remarkable amount of work Emori, Echo, and Bellamy have put into it. There are racks and shelves pulled from various other rooms around the Ring and arranged in neat rows. Bellamy, with Echo’s help, has arranged the items Emori brings him into an organized system, complete with labels handwritten on duct-tape: metal, plastic, blankets, so on and so on.

 

Monty and Raven fill up Emori’s makeshift cart, and Murphy helps them drag the pile into the algae farm, over to an unused corner of the room, where they start unloading, laying the pieces out along the floor so they can see them all. Murphy and Harper stand off to the side, curious and anxious, but clueless as to what their resident mechanic and engineer are actually planning.

 

For the next few days, Harper and Murphy tend to the algae farm, watching carefully for any signs of growth and swallowing disappointment each time, while Raven and Monty start building something. Murphy isn’t quite sure what it is. It appears to be a cylindrical metal container on some kind of stand. Whenever he tries to ask for more of an explanation, Raven shoos him off testily. He remembers what Raven’s like in her anger – and how hard she can hit – and wisely stays out of their way.

 

Instead, he goes to Medical, using the program Monty used to create a written inventory of their supplies. Afterwards, he thinks of the supply room, of Bellamy’s careful organization, and takes Bellamy the list.

 

Bellamy is surprised when Murphy hands him the tablet and explains what he’s done. As he reads, his eyebrows lift up high on his forehead. Echo watches them from where she’s stacking odds and ends on a shelf.

 

“This is good work,” Bellamy tells him. Murphy lifts his chin with pride, feels himself standing just a bit taller. _Damn right it is_ , he thinks.

 

“We’ve already had two injuries,” he says instead. “Figured it’d be good to actually keep track.”  
  


“It is,” Bellamy agrees with a nod. He glances back down at the list of items, mouth twisting like he’s eaten something sour. “It’s not much. We’ll have to be careful.”

 

Murphy leaves the tablet with Bellamy so he can add his items to it – one massive inventory of what they have available to them for the next five years – and turns to leave.

 

“Hey, Murphy,” Bellamy calls as he nears the door, and he turns his head to look back over his shoulder at him, raising an eyebrow. “Good job.”

 

 _Thank you_ , he thinks, but doesn’t say. _I’m more useful than you thought, huh?_ comes next, but he swallows that one back down too.

 

Just like last time, Murphy hates the stupid part of him that perks up at Bellamy’s praise and flutters excitedly in his chest. The younger him – from what feels like lifetimes ago, but is just months – would have given anything for Bellamy’s praise. Now that he has it, Murphy finds he doesn’t want it.

 

The person he is now, after everything, doesn’t have to rely on Bellamy to make him something worthwhile or impressive like he’d once thought the older man could – he can do that for himself. He _has_ done that for himself.

 

After everything Earth’s thrown at him, Murphy finds he’s not as impressed with Bellamy Blake as he once was.

 

Besides, he can’t let go of the hanging. It feels both like ages ago and just yesterday. And two weeks ago is a fresher wound – in the bunker with Bellamy’s arms tight around his neck, unearthing every single screaming fear and nightmare of suffocation from where he’d stuffed them away in his head. And Bellamy – unconcerned. Unrepentant.

 

Murphy’s not sure he even wants his friendship, anymore, if it were offered.

 

“Just trying to help keep us all alive,” he says dryly.

 

The walls are looming as he leaves. The air seems thinner.  Murphy focuses on breathing.

 

* * *

 

Monty and Raven, when determined, work fast. They finish the composter on day three, well before Monty’s estimate. They’ve moved it out of the algae farm and into an unused room, on the more secluded side of the Ring, far away from everything else.

 

It’s the second day they’ve had to go without food completely. Murphy feels empty and weak. His stomach growls frequently with angry want. In his head, he compares it to a black hole, because he remembers learning about them years and years ago, and it seems that starving is making him poetic.

 

“Ta-da,” Raven says when Harper and Murphy arrive. Her voice is listless, even though her eyes are bright with triumph. Her hair is starting to fall out of its braid again, the free strands clumping together with sweat and grime.

 

“It’ll work?” Harper asks.

 

“Hopefully,” Monty says, which isn’t tremendously reassuring, but probably as good as they’re going to get. “But now comes the fun part,” he adds, voice thick with sarcasm.

 

“And that’s my cue to leave,” Raven jokes, but again her voice is flat, the humor tempered with exhaustion and hunger. “Have fun, guys.”

 

What follows is one of the worst things Murphy’s ever had to do – topped only by surviving physical torture and very nearly starving to death once already. He thinks it’s only the cockroach in him that helps him get through it.

 

The toilet on the Ring stores their waste in vacuum-sealed bags. After two weeks, and between the seven of them, there’s a decent number of bags. The three of them gather them up and take them to the room with the composter.

 

They have little to protect themselves from the smell, but they’ve tried to do the best they can with strips of blankets tied securely over their noses as makeshift masks.

 

It’s not enough. When they cut open the bags and begin dumping them into the composter, the smell is nearly overwhelming. Murphy gags, bile rising in his throat, and he watches Harper hold her breath, cheeks puffed out almost comically despite the situation.

 

It’s awful, unpleasant work. Murphy’s stomach rises and crashes in constant waves of nausea, and he nearly throws up several times. He’s not sure what would come up if he did, since his aching stomach reminds him it’s already digested everything he fed it yesterday. Bile, maybe?

 

The whole process seems to take hours, despite how quickly they work. When Monty finally slams the composter hatch closed, and motions towards the door, Murphy nearly cries with relief. The machine begins spinning with an awful, clunky hum as the three of them rush out of the room, nearly tripping over themselves in their haste. Murphy makes it out first, and, as soon as Harper and Monty follow him out into the hallway, he slams the door closed to keep the smell from escaping to the rest of the Ring. It’s obvious now why they’ve used a room so far from everything else.

 

The stale, recycled – but thankfully, not malodorous – air of the Ring hallway is a relief, and the three of them take in large, gulping breaths. Murphy yanks at the strip of cloth around his face, and, when that only pulls the knot tighter, wrestles it up over his head, tossing it to the ground. He swears the smell sunk into the fabric at some point.

 

“That,” he says, the word a sharp, harsh sound, “was fucking awful,” and there is a moment of unvoiced agreement as they all ruminate on that statement, on the past couple hours of work, and, frankly, on the past two weeks aboard the Ring – every minute of which has been a continuing nightmare of uncertain survival.

 

The composter churns on behind them, the monstrous humming muffled from the door.

 

“I can’t get the smell out of my nose,” Harper says suddenly, and her voice is strained. It takes Murphy a moment to realize it’s on the verge of hysterical laughter. “I think it’s burned in there.”

 

There’s a beat of silence. Then Murphy starts laughing, because the whole situation is ridiculous, and, after everything, they might still starve to death, and honestly, what the hell else can he do?

 

The other two stare at him in surprise. Then Harper dissolves into hysterical giggles. She moves to bury her face in her hands, then immediately thinks better of it and throws them out in front of her, as far from her nose as she can manage.

 

“That was awful,” she says. “Just – god – just, _awful_. Float me. “

 

“Fuck this stupid space station,” Murphy gasps out between laughs. It feels good to say. He says it again. “Fuck this stupid, fucking space station.”

 

They make a weird duet together, with their slightly manic laughter – Harper’s high-pitched, airy giggles and Murphy’s booming laughs. Monty watches them silently, and Murphy wonders if he thinks they’ve lost their minds. Hell, if they _have_ lost their minds.

 

They deserve a breakdown or two, he thinks. After everything.

 

“I don’t know how I’m going to eat anything that grows in that,” Harper says as her giggles taper off. She continues to hold her hands out in the air in front of her. “I’m just going to keep thinking of this.”

 

“I’d eat anything right now,” Murphy says, honestly. His stomach feels achy and hollow, and its only day four.

 

“Even shit food?” Monty asks dryly. It comes out muffled from the blanket still covering his face.

 

Murphy snorts a laugh at that, but it’s not the half-deranged laughter of just a minute ago. “Yeah, even shit food,” he agrees.

 

A weird feeling settles in the hallway. It’s not quite victorious, since nothing about what they’ve just done feels at all victorious, but it is something. It’s fighting back, at the very least, against the thing that keeps trying to kill them. This gives them another chance. It might even give them five more years.

 

Murphy had never really thought of the delinquents as a team, and certainly not one he was a part of. As he regards the three of them in the hallway, all starving and hungry and disgusting in equal parts, he can’t help but think of them as one.

 

Even if it doesn’t work, they’ve fought back. And they’ve done it together. He thinks maybe it's easier to survive as part of a team.

 


	5. Fisa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emori and Murphy work up an appetite, Echo gives Murphy something to think about, and Murphy does something stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long hiatus this fic has been on - I lost a lot of steam with it for a bit. But I'm back on track and ready to see this through until the end!! Don't worry - there's still a lot more coming.
> 
> Thank you so much for all the lovely comments!
> 
>  
> 
> And once again, all my love and thanks to infernalandmortal, the best editor in the world!

The algae farm team is granted one extra shower each after dealing with the composter, but it doesn’t help much. They don’t have any soap aboard the Ring, and there’s only so much that rinsing off with water will do. The smell stays.

It’s not just the algae farm team, either – everyone’s starting to smell more than a little ripe. Two weeks of sweat and BO have built up into a truly repulsive cocktail of stenches.

The Ring reeks, and there’s nothing they can do about it.

Murphy thinks he should be used to it. He’s been dirtier than this before, and he definitely went longer than two weeks without a shower in the bunker, but it’s one thing to be alone with your own stench and another to be trapped in close space with six other unwashed, smelly human beings. He misses the luxury of frequent showers that Becca’s island had provided. What he wouldn’t give right now to have some of her ancient, but still sweet-smelling, soap.

The algae team are loath to put their dirty clothes back on. Harper wasn’t really exaggerating about the smell latching onto them, and the thought of wearing them again is almost as repulsive as filling the composter was. Which is how the three of them end up digging through the handful of guard uniforms and undershirts collected in the supply room. Harper and Monty look right at home in the uniforms, though Harper’s jacket hangs a little large on her, and she has to roll the sleeves up to keep them from falling over her hands.

Murphy hesitates before taking one himself. For a moment, he holds the jacket in his hands and stares hard at the familiar logo on the sleeve. It’s easy to pull up the old, familiar hate; he thinks that it probably never leaves, just simmers quietly under his skin waiting to boil.

He remembers the guards that came to take his father. He remembers the guards that came to take him.

“What’s wrong?” Monty asks as he’s adjusting his own uniform.

“Nothing,” Murphy snaps, stuffing the memories away as he balls the jacket up into a wad and shoves it back on the shelf with the others.

 

* * *

 

His hair keeps falling in his face. With an irritated huff, Murphy pushes it away from his eyes; it only takes a few moments for it to fall forward again.

Emori laughs at him from where she lays stretched out across their bed, and he sticks his tongue out at her in response, which only makes her laugh harder. Her head scarf is off now that they’re alone, lying discarded next to their bed with the rest of her many layers and her glove. Without it, he can see that her hair looks just as greasy as his, shining in the overhead lights. It’s much neater than his, though, and better kept. The braid he did for her this morning is still in place, and he knows from running his fingers through it that it’s not nearly as knotted as his own.

“Maybe I should start wearing my hair in braids like you,” he mutters, and she snorts.

“You’d look like a Kyongedon,” she says. “Besides, there’s not enough of it, and I can’t braid it.”

“It’d keep it out of my way,” he says, and Emori sits up.

“Sit down,” she says, gesturing towards the floor in front of her; he does as he’s told. Her hands begin combing through his hair, and he relaxes into the sensation, until they catch on a knot and tug sharply at his roots. He yelps in pain.

“Sorry,” Emori says, but keeps tugging. “I can’t comb through it. It’s so tangled.”

“Yeah, it’s – fuck! Emori!” Murphy shouts, wincing at every tug. It feels like she’s trying to rip it out of his head.

She sighs deeply and releases his hair. When he glances back at her, he almost laughs. Her face is twisted up in a pout, and she’s giving his matted locks a fierce glare, annoyed by her defeat.

“How did you even let it get this bad?” He shrugs, and Emori huffs. “I should just cut it all off,” she gripes.

“That’d be better than you just ripping it out like you were trying.”

She smooths her hands over it, fiddling with the ends, then grabs her knife from where she keeps it beside their bed. “I could? If you really want it out of your way.”

Murphy shrugs. “Yeah, sure, why not.” He’s never much cared how he looks; even if she screws it up, it’ll grow back eventually.

Emori directs his face forward. Her movements are gentler than when she had been tugging through the knots. They both fall quiet as she works, only the sounds of their breathing and her knife against his matted hair breaking the silence of the room. The air is warm and calm; Murphy sinks into it gladly, content with the weight of her presence behind him and the soft, flittering touch of her hands against his scalp.

It’s only when she gets near the back of his neck that he tenses without thinking, his body reacting before his mind can even catch up. Emori stops.

From where they hang over his crossed knees, he can see his hands shaking. He wills them to still, but they ignore him. The air in the room drops from pleasant to suffocating in an instant, pushing against him like a heavy weight - pushing against his chest. Murphy struggles to keep his breathing calm and even, but he can't seem to get enough air, and the weight on his chest is growing heavier and heavier, like something sitting on it, on him, crushing his lungs, his _throat_ , and he can't breath. 

His senses kick into overdrive; he's incredibly aware of Emori’s presence behind him, of her body heat near the skin of his neck. He feels his shirt collar where it lays.

“Keep going,” he snaps. He feels stuffed into a body one size too small; his skin is tight. He makes his voice mean to hide the shaking. “Don’t leave me looking stupid with half a haircut just because I’m a dumbass.”

“You’re not a dumbass,” Emori says gently, ignoring his tone.

 _I am_ , he wants to argue. He wants to point out that when he was in his room alone, he had to stretch the collar of his new shirt out until it lay loose around his neck. Or the fact that he props their door open every night and panicked once to the point of choking when she accidentally let it slam closed. Isn’t he a dumbass for still being so scared of things that happened in the past?

The light touch of something warm presses against the back of his neck. The skin beneath it buzzes and burns. It takes him a minute to realize it’s Emori’s lips as she presses a gentle kiss to the scar tissue that can only be seen when the light hits it just right. His body surprises him by not panicking, but maybe he shouldn't be surprised at all - it's Emori at his neck, and he trusts her with his life.

“Do you think I’m stupid for having nightmares?” she asks softly against his skin, her words muffled.

“No, of course not,” he assures her honestly. He’s never once thought her stupid or weak for fearing the life she’s had.

“Then why would you think I’d think the same of you?”

He has no answer. It seems obvious when she says it, her voice strong and steady with conviction, but he can’t convince himself of it. 

Emori’s hands stroke down his arms – up and down in soothing waves, rhythmic and calming. He's reminded of the way their boat used to bob in the water and lull them to sleep when they’d anchored for the night. Murphy leans back into her, closing the space between them; she shifts her face from his neck to his shoulder to accommodate him.

“Sometimes, I get worried when I see Bellamy out of the corner of my eye,” she confesses into the fabric of his shirt.

He jolts upwards again, but she grabs his arms tight and pulls him back to her. “Why – has he done something?

“No, of course not. He’s been nothing but kind to me. But his hair looks a lot like Baylis’s did.” That’s all she has to say. “I’ll see him, and – and for a minute I’ll think he’s here, and I’ll panic. Even if I know –” She swallows, and her voice is disgusted and angry when she continues, “Even if I know the planhaka died in Praimfiya like he deserved.”

“He deserved worse,” Murphy spits. Emori hums in agreement, then leans forward as much as she can to kiss his cheek; he turns around completely to meet her lips in a real kiss. “I love you,” he says when they part, and how incredible is it that he still hasn’t tired of saying it?

“I love you, too,” she tells him. He hasn’t tired of that either.

Emori kisses him once more, then pulls away and picks up her knife again. “Now turn around so I can finish your hair.”

Murphy obeys. When she starts cutting the hair by his neck again, he forces himself to calm, focusing on his breathing as she works. The weight is still there, but it's lessened, and he finds that he can breathe around it. When she’s finished, she brushes the loose hair away and runs her fingers through her completed work. He’s sure it’s still greasy and disgusting, but at least she can comb her fingers through it without hitting a knot.

“There. Much better,” she tells him, satisfied.

Murphy reaches back to run his own hands through it. They don’t have a mirror in their room, so he’ll have to seek one out later to see what he looks like. His head feels lighter than usual, and it’s weird to feel it so short on the sides. He’s never worn his hair this short before.

“Thanks.” He turns to grin at her. “I could do yours now.”

Emori narrows her eyes at him. “Don’t you dare.”

“What? I think you’d look cute with short hair,” he assures her.

“But then how would you braid it?”

He shrugs. “I’d get creative.”

“Maybe another time,” she says, then in one fluid motion slips from the bed onto his lap. He grunts at the sudden weight, then shoots her an eager grin and wraps his arms around her back. “But I have a better idea of what we could do right now.”

“Oh, do you?” he asks with a laugh. Emori grins impishly at him, eyes bright with amusement, then pushes him backwards until he’s lying flat on the ground with her perched on top of him.

“I think you’ll like it,” she says as she leans down to meet him and captures his lips in her own.

 

* * *

 

Afterwards, Murphy just feels hungry. Part of him feels satisfied, content to lie tangled up in Emori on their bedroom floor, the blankets from their bed pulled half off and haphazardly over them, but it’s hard to appreciate when faced with the empty pit that is his stomach. Sex with Emori is always fun, but exertion made the hunger worse.

He’s sure Emori feels the same; she has less energy than usual afterwards, could hardly move just to shift into a more comfortable possible against him, and lays like a deadweight against him now. His suspicions are confirmed when her stomach growls loudly.

“Yeah, me too,” he says, and she grunts.

“Ration day tomorrow,” she mumbles into his shoulder, the words slurring together in her exhaustion.

“Yay,” he says unenthusiastically. Their rations are so small they’re more a taunt than anything actually satisfying. He’ll probably feel just as bad after they eat tomorrow as he does now. “Guess we are starving to death together after all,” he can’t help but say. If the result is the same, maybe the lighthouse would have been better; he and Emori could just have sex until their dying day and not have to think about anyone else, or how they were going to grow food, or worry about Azgedan spies out to get them.

“No, we’re not,” Emori says. “Not yet.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, voice soft. He seeks out her hand where it’s laying against his collarbone and knits their fingers together with a gentle squeeze. She squeezes back. They’re still alive, and there’s still hope. “Not yet.”

 

* * *

 

Since Raven has finished fixing the heater, Murphy decides to try his luck asking her about the medical files again. The longer the medicine sits unidentified, the antsier he gets about it. Already he’s imagined a million different scenarios where one of them falls sick – usually Emori – and the medicine to help them sits untouched because they didn’t know what it was. The thought fills him with a sort of dread he doesn’t know how to articulate and a certainty that they can’t let that happen.

Raven isn’t in any of her usual haunts. He traipses back and forth across the Ring with the tablet from Medical searching for her, until finally he nears the airlock on the side of the Ring usually unvisited by the seven of them and catches the tail end of an argument.

He hears Raven first, voice loud and thick with anger. “Well, in case you forgot, no one actually appointed you our leader, _Bellamy_.” She spits his name like a curse.

Murphy halts in the middle of the hallway, both intrigued by the argument and the raw anger in her voice – anger at Bellamy is something he’s intimately familiar with – and afraid to keep walking straight into the middle of that shitshow. He stands as quietly as he can.

“I’m just trying to look out for us – “ Bellamy argues back, before Raven cuts him off.

“No, you’re not! You’re worried about your sister.”

“We don’t know if they made it, Raven,” Bellamy says, and Murphy doesn’t need to see his face to read his desperation.

“We don’t know if _we’re_ going to make it, Bellamy! We have to focus on us first. Clarke didn’t die so we could –“

“Shut up.” Bellamy’s voice is cold and pained. For a moment, Murphy almost regrets eavesdropping; he’s not supposed to hear this – not Bellamy this vulnerable. If he was a better person, he’d turn around now and avoid overhearing anything else, head back to his room and come find Raven later.

He stays rooted in the hallway.

“What? Just because you don’t want to say it, or talk about it, or fucking admit it, doesn’t mean it’s not true. She’s dea-“

“SHUT UP!” The yell is punctuated by the loud, echoing bang of something hitting metal – like someone’s thrown their fist against the wall of the Ark. It rings through the air, and, as the echoing fades away, silence settles uneasily in the spaces it left, feeling incredibly precarious, like a powder keg about to blow. Murphy realizes he’s holding his breath.

“Bellamy,” Raven says, and Murphy tenses, afraid of the explosion, but her voice is softer and stripped of most of her previous anger. It sounds like a plea as she says, “Not talking about it isn’t going to change it. And making choices because you’re worried about Octavia isn’t going to keep _us_ alive.”

“I know.” Bellamy sounds utterly defeated. It’s uncomfortable to hear. “Sorry, I just – I don’t know how to do this without her, Raven. I always fuck it up when it’s just me.”

“Well, it’s not just you, you dumbass. I’m with you, remember?”

“Yeah,” Bellamy agrees, but there’s little conviction in it. “I’ll leave you alone.”

When he turns the corner, Murphy gets a good look at him for the first time in a couple days, and the state he’s fallen into since he last saw him is shocking. He’s clearly been neglecting shaving, and his beard is unruly. His hair is equally as bad – worse even than Murphy’s had been thanks to the curls. His face is drawn; his eyes are lined with dark, purple bags. He’s looks skeletal and sad, and it makes something in Murphy twist to see it.

When he sees Murphy standing there, he scowls. “What are you doing here?”

“Eavesdropping” seems like the wrong response, so Murphy shrugs in an attempt to look innocent and stutters, “I was just, uh – I was looking for Raven. Heard you guys talking down this way.”

Bellamy looks like he knows Murphy heard more than he was supposed to, but also like he can’t be bothered to care about it. He gestures back over his shoulder. “She’s over that way.” And without another word, he shuffles along the corridor, slow and slumped and zombie-like. Murphy stares after him for a moment because he can’t help himself, something a lot like pity squirming in his stomach. Then he shakes it off and rounds the corner to find Raven.

She’s standing in the airlock; the doors to space are securely shut, but the doors to the Ring are wide open, and it makes him nervous as he approaches, even if he has confidence Raven knows what she’s doing. She’s fitting a welding helmet over her head and frowns when she spots him.

“If whatever it is isn’t life-threatening, I don’t want to hear it,” she snaps, then turns away from him to face the wall.

“That’s a rude welcome. Maybe I just came to ask how you’re doing.” she turns again to level him with a disbelieving look, and he shrugs. “Okay, fine. I need your help with something.”

“Of course you do,” Raven scoffs as pulls her face plate down. The next sentence comes out muffled, but it doesn't hide the exasperation. “Everyone does.”

Murphy watches her study the wall for a minute and concludes that, like Bellamy, she’s looking worse than she did even a few days ago when he last saw her. Maybe they all are. Cutting down their rations hasn't been easy on anyone. “But I can ask how you’re doing while I’m here.”

She pushes the face plate up again but doesn’t turn around to face him. “Well, I’m exhausted and starving, there’s about fifty things I have to fix on the Ring and people keep giving me other requests,” it’s clear she’s talking about Bellamy and whatever mess he’d overheard, “and I haven’t showered in…what….three weeks? I smell like the inside of a shoe.”

“Wow,” he says, “that good?”

“Shut up,” she mutters without much heat.

Murphy glances back the way Bellamy came, and, though he knows he shouldn’t admit to overhearing, his curiosity gets the better of him. “What was that all about?”

Raven groans. “Bellamy wants me to try fixing the radio. So we can talk to the bunker.”

Murphy perks up. There’s no one in the bunker he really cares to talk to, but if they could talk to the bunker, he could ask Abby about the medicine. “Can you?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “There’s a lot of variables. Maybe we get our side fixed, but the bunker radio is still messed up. Maybe we can’t even fix our side. I told him it’s not worth the effort right now. It’s more important that I fix all these damn cracks in the Ring.”

“Cracks?” he asks, heart rate spiking.

“Relax, with me here, you’re fine. But the rest of the Ark leaving did a number on the Ring.” She bends down to set her tools on the ground, and as she stands up straight again, she flinches, wincing in pain. “Fuck,” she mutters, and he watches a hand go to press against her leg – her bad one – with dread.

“You okay?” he asks, afraid of the answer.

She stays half-hunched for a moment, eyes pinched shut as she breathes out through her mouth, before steeling herself and standing straight again. “I’m fine,” she says tersely, waving off his concern. “What’d you need?”

As much as he wants to ask why it’s bothering her, he also has no desire to know. Shame burns like a fire in his chest, but he ignores it and holds up the tablet. “There’s a bunch of medicine left, but I’m not sure what it is. This was in Medical. Figured there might be something on here that says what it is? And what it’s for?”

Raven purses her lips and raises an eyebrow at him. “And that’s life-threatening how?” she prompts.

“Hey, it’s life-threatening if someone gets sick and we don’t know how to treat them.”

She considers that for a moment, then nods. “Fair. Alright, hand it over.” As she begins messing with it, he steps up next to her so he can watch over her shoulder and try and follow her. After a few minutes of clicking on, what looks to him, random things without reason, she sighs, and says, “The Ark server is down. Probably thanks to take off. Again. I’ll have to get it up and running again before we know.”

He’s not sure what that means, but he’s glad she understands it. “And can you fix it?”

“Who do I think I am?” she scoffs. “Give me a couple days.”

 

* * *

 

Someone knocks on his bedroom door that evening when he’s there alone, and he looks up to see Echo standing in the doorway. She holds herself stiff and awkward, as if she knows she isn’t exactly wanted there. Murphy tries to hold back his sneer. He’s not quite sure he succeeds, but he honestly can’t be too bothered about it. He’s just relieved she came by while Emori was taking her weekly shower; then again, it’s possible Echo might have planned it that way on purpose.

“What do you want?” he asks. Like usual, she doesn’t react much, emotions locked away behind a mask as cold as the land she hails from, but her lips quirk downwards just slightly at his tone. Reading her even that much feels like a victory.

“I’m not going to hurt Emori, if that’s what you’re so angry about.”

Looks like she has no trouble reading him. “Why do you think I’m angry?” he asks, not willing to give up so easily.

The mask falls as Echo rolls her eyes. “Because I’m not foolish,” she huffs. “I know you’ve been avoiding me more than usual since she and I started working together. And I’ve seen you whenever we’re in the same room, staring at me like I’m going to cut her throat if you aren’t watching. I _won’t_.” She adds forcefully when he glares at her.

“But Azgeda does kill mutants, don’t they?” he snaps. The clan name feels vile on his tongue; he hope it sounds vile coming out.

“I am Azgeda no more,” Echo growls, the words staccato and heavy, spit through clenched teeth. It is the angriest he has ever heard her, and the most emotive, too. Her arms are tight and drawn like bow strings at her sides. She blinks several times, rapidly, but it doesn’t hide the tears forming there. “I have no reason to kill her. I swear to you I won’t hurt her.”

Easy words to say. He’s not sure if he believes that she’s being honest, and his fear for Emori outweighs his willingness to trust her. Even so, it’s reassuring to hear; most of his anger quiets and calms.

“Why are you here?” he asks.

Echo holds out her arm – the one he stitched up roughly a week ago. He can see the uneven stitches from across the room.

“Can you check that this is healing correctly?”

“Why are you coming to me?” he can't help but ask, since he thought his recent anger at her might have deterred her.

Confusion pinches her eyebrows together. “You’re our fisa, aren’t you? Our healer?” she corrects in English, after he fails to understand.

Shock knocks the air out of him as well as if she’d punched him. The concept is so completely baffling he isn’t quite sure how to process it. Sure, he’d stitched up some cuts and thrown some bandages on Monty’s hands – but that certainly didn’t make him a _healer_. No one had ever mistaken him for a doctor, before.

“I’m not,” he says, fumbling over the words. The other members of the hundred would probably laugh if they were here – right? John Murphy: doctor. There’s a joke.

“You’re not?” Echo asks, looking as confused as he feels. “Didn’t you treat Monty’s hands? And stitch up my cut?”

He can’t deny that he had, but he doesn’t understand her leap in logic from a few simple things to thinking he’s a doctor. Then again, there's also his obsession with Medical and all the time he's spent there taking inventory and trying to access old medical files. And his compulsion to identify the medicines. But all of that is just precaution. Fear. He has the sad backstory to preach the importance of medical care, after all.

“I – uh, yeah,” he says. “But I’m no healer. I don’t know anything more than that.”

Echo takes this in, then shrugs. “Even so, you can tell me if my arm is healing correctly, right? You stitched it up in the first place.”

He stands up and approaches her to get a better look. Like he predicted, it’s going to scar noticeably, but he doubts Echo cares much. The wound still looks tender, even though it looks, as far as he can tell, like it’s healing correctly. At the very least there’s no sign of infection, the importance of which Emori had drilled into him the first time he sutured one of her wounds.

“Looks about right. Give it another week, and we can take the stitches out.”

When she leaves, the word _healer_ lingers in the room, and he can’t stop turning it over and over in his head like the right angle will make sense of it.

 

* * *

 

The atmosphere in the algae farm remains hopeful after the composter incident – or Operation Shit, as Murphy’s been calling it. The algae might not be growing, but at least they’re working on another solution – and even though limiting their rations is miserable, it is buying them time. Like Emori said, they’re not quite starving to death yet.

There’s still hope.

The three of them are comfortable in a way they weren’t before. Harper doesn’t look like she wants to rip Murphy’s head off every time he looks at her anymore, and they move more easily around each other than they had previously. 

Still, going without food is hard, and the hunger is draining on all of them. 

Murphy feels constantly empty. In the emptiness, the anger begins to flourish. The bossy way Monty gives his instructions in the farm grates on him. Emori’s tendency to throw her clothing and the few personal items she’s squirreled away from around the Ring all over their room in messy piles drives him nuts. Harper has a terrible habit of humming under her breath as they work that makes him want to scream.

The irritation builds, and he starts to bow to it. He snaps back at Monty’s directions even as he carries them out. He tosses Emori’s messes in the corner of their room without care so he stops tripping over them. He tells Harper her damn, tuneless humming is haunting his nightmares.

Murphy’s never been the nicest person even in the best situations, but now, tired and hungry and increasingly worried about starving to death, he gets mean. Harper and Monty, just as irritable and hungry, match him insult for insult. The peace in the farm starts to splinter.

There is something utterly devastating about walking into the farm for the fifth day in a row to find no sign of growth. The hope that Murphy had been clinging to crumbles.

“We’re fucked, aren’t we?” he demands before anyone else can say anything.

“We went over our timeline together,” Monty snaps. “It’s not completely hopeless yet. Give it some more time.”

“I’ve given it time – we’ve all given you time! And food! But we’re no better off than when we landed.” He eyes Monty up, hoping he can look as disdainful as he feels. “I’m starting to think you’re just a shitty farmer.”

The room grows tight with tension. Monty bristles. “You wouldn’t even know what to do without –“

Murphy cuts him off, and he knows he’s going to regret this before he even speaks, but the words, hot and heavy with anger and fear, bubble up in him, and he wants to claw at Monty until he feels as miserable as he does, so he opens his mouth and lets them spill. “Or maybe you’re screwing us on purpose so you can take the coward’s way out like Jasp—“

Monty punches him before he can finish the name. Murphy feels his head snap back, and the force of the blow against his eye and skull, and the peace between them shattering, just like that.

“We should have left you to burn,” Monty hisses. His voice is so cold it makes the hair on the back of Murphy’s neck stand on end. He wonders briefly, wildly, if Monty will kill him - if throwing the one thing he refuses to talk about in his face is an offense worthy of revenge. And then Murphy straightens his head, throws a hand up to rub at his throbbing skin, and throws a glare at Monty as poisonous and angry as he can manage.

“Get out,” Harper growls. Murphy thinks if he lingers, she might take her own swing at him.

He doesn’t hesitate. He turns tail and storms out, angry and bitter in a way he can't contain - for the Ark. For the never-ending stream of shittiness life keeps throwing at him.

For himself. 

Some healer he’s turning out to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kyongedon - Trigedasleng word for "Grounder"


	6. Tension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tension on the Ring reaches a boiling point. Bellamy gets excited about lye and no one appreciates it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to the lovely, wonderful infernalandmortal for editing this chapter super quickly. She's a delight, and I love her!
> 
> Just so everyone knows, I'm alternating updates between this fic and Romancing the Flame.

**** Murphy’s not sure what to do with himself after that. He doesn’t have to be a genius to know he’s no longer welcome in the algae farm, but he feels useless laying around with nothing to do while everyone else works – and there’s very little he hates more than feeling useless.

He could get another job, he supposes – surely there’s more to do on the Ring than what’s currently being done – but the thought of being around other people right now makes his skin crawl. People are frustrating and complicated and  _ hard _ .

Besides, what’s he even good at other than being an asshole?

But doing nothing only makes his mood worse. The argument with Monty runs endlessly through his mind, and the fear that he’s starting to use up all his second chances with the others keeps nipping at him. How long before he pisses them off one too many times and they realize how pointless it is that he’s even here?

On the second day of his own self-exile, he begs Emori to steal a book from the supply room so he can distract himself from his own spiraling thoughts. He doesn’t dare go himself in fear of seeing Bellamy – not quite sure if he’s dreading a potential beat-down or lecture more. Emori brings him one with a cover so faded he can’t even make out the title. The pages inside are yellowed with age and lined with poems full of words he doesn’t know and phrases that get tripped up in his brain. He feels a headache forming two pages in, but he keeps idly flipping back and forth and struggling through random lines just for something to do. If he had a marker of some sort, it would make this easier. His dad taught him that.

A knock on his door interrupts him, and, despite how much he had wanted to be alone, he’s relieved to have an excuse to throw the book aside.

It’s Raven, looking...well, pissed is an understatement. Everything about her radiates anger: her stance, the tension in her shoulders, the cutting glare on her face. Murphy’s intimately familiar with her anger; he’s probably seen her mad at him more times than he’s seen her actually happy with him. Going back to the status quo of hatred and anger isn’t a fun experience.

“You look mad at me,” he says as he sits up.

Raven scoffs, unamused. “Yeah, good guess.”

“Monty told you,” he guesses. He looks away from her, but he can still feel her angry gaze laying heavy on his shoulders as he fiddles with the blankets beneath him.

“Harper, actually.”

Murphy sighs. He finds the bravery to lift his eyes back up to hers. “You here to tell me to apologize?” he asks dryly.

Raven scoffs again, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, right. I don’t have time to be your babysitter.” She thrusts the tablet he’d given her roughly out at him. “Here. I got the server up and running. You can access the files for Medical now – and good timing. You need to spend some time alone to cool off and stop acting like a dick.”

“You’re one to talk,” he snipes. It’s not like he’s the only one to throw a lost loved one in someone’s face.

“Hey, I just did you a favor,” Raven snaps. “Don’t make me regret it.”

He bites down hard on his anger and traps the coming insult in his throat. Then, he takes a deep breath and breathes out roughly, rubbing his hand roughly across his face like he can drag the anger and shame away with the movement. “Sorry,” he says after a moment. It’s not as sincere as the one in the lab, a little too forceful, like if he doesn’t let it burst out of him it won’t come out at all. His head is killing him. It’s probably the hunger.  “Thank you. I’m just worried about the food.”

“Everyone is,” Raven snaps. His apology hasn’t softened her anger at all. She looks like a whirlwind caught in the doorway, a bundle of angry energy in the shape of a person, and he’s almost expecting her to charge forward, fists swinging again. “Doesn’t give you the excuse to say what you said.”

Murphy sighs. It’s softer than before. “Yeah,” he mutters, eyes on the floor of his room so he can avoid her gaze. Shame burns hot on his skin.

“You crossed a line. I didn’t come here to tell you to apologize, but you should.”

“I know,” he says quietly.

“Good,” Raven huffs. "Your eye looks like shit by the way.”

He hasn’t looked in a mirror since Monty punched him, but he felt the bruise growing all through the night, and it’s so swollen now it won’t open completely. It hurts to touch, even when Emori had prodded at it as gently as she could to assess the damage. He doesn’t doubt Raven’s telling the truth. It  _ feels _ like shit. Monty’s stronger than he looks.

He takes the tablet from her, and Raven runs quickly through the instructions for accessing the files, as if she’s trying to spend as little time here as she has to. She turns to leave the second she’s finished, but a jolt goes through her body as soon as she puts weight on her bad leg. She winces, hissing between her teeth, and he reaches out a hand to grab her, afraid she’s about to fall, his stomach plummeting with a familiar heaviness.  

“You okay?” he asks, almost more afraid of her answer than her falling.

Raven waves him off, her movements quick and angry. “I’m fine,” she mutters without looking at him, then limps down the hallway without another word.

His guilt stays.

 

* * *

 

There’s more on the tablet than Murphy expected. Not only does he find an inventory list with full descriptions of what each medication the Ark had had is for and how it’s used, but he also finds files on everything from broken bones to oxygen deficiency, detailing causes, symptoms, and treatments, along with full, detailed records of past cases the Ark had dealt with.

The tablet is a gold mine.

At least he appears to have done one thing right.

He saves identifying the medicine they have for another day, because it would require him going to Medical and he’s still wary of running into someone who’s angry at him. Monty or Bellamy might give him a second black eye. Harper might actually murder him.  

So he picks a file at random and starts reading.

If he thought struggling through the poetry book was hard, it’s nothing compared to the files.

Like usual, nothing sits right in his head. The letters dance and move, switch positions, and get so tangled up in each other he can’t tell what’s actually on the page and what is his brain making a mess of things again. He tries the trick his father taught him when he was younger – uses a hand to cover the lines as he goes – but it’s even more difficult to struggle through medical terms he doesn’t understand. His headache gets worse.

“Float this,” he mutters finally, ready to give up. Raven might kill him if he doesn’t use the files she spent the time to get him, but this is pointless. It was stupid to think he’d be able to read through medical texts. He can hardly read through normal texts. Clarke’s joke on the island hadn’t been too far off – it’s a miracle he can read anything at all with his brain as fucked as it is.

He’s not smart. He’s not well educated. He can’t even read. Why had he even thought he could become some kind of doctor? Just from – what? What  _ Echo _ had said? Echo, who doesn’t know him in the slightest? Echo, who probably thinks eating some seaweed is good enough to be a doctor and that technology is magic? This was stupid. He’s stupid.

He’s about to toss the tablet aside when he sees a file labeled “Influenza” and feels his blood run cold. That word sticks. That word sorts itself out in his brain. He’s seen it enough times to recognize it easily.

For a moment, all he can do is stare at it, held captive with the weight of memory. And then curiosity – or masochism, maybe – moves his hand towards the innocent looking word and clicks.

In some ways, it’s easier to read this file than the others. He still remembers the symptoms well, even though his mind had often been lost in fever, and it’s easier to sort out what the words are supposed to say with that context. In others, it’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to read. Every word feels like a heavy weight on his stomach, dragging it closer and closer towards somewhere, knotted up, in his feet.

He reads through the records of past cases, of the outbreak of 2086 and then the one in 2142. He finds his own name amongst a list, sitting innocently in simple text: Jonathon Alexander Murphy, age nine. Recovered.

The text is too simple for the power it holds. There should be more. Here’s where it all went wrong, it should say. This was the turning point, when he first woke up to find his father missing and his mother already settling into an anger she would grow further into with every passing day. Here is where he first knew the sting of abandonment. Here is where he first faced death and survived.

Only it hadn’t just been because of him that’d he’d lived. It’d been thanks to the doctors, to Abby and the others, who recorded his name here and treated him day and night even when they couldn’t give him more medicine.

What happens when flu breaks out here again? Who will be able to treat it without Abby – or even Clarke? In a way, isn’t him trying to pass as a doctor better than none at all?

Besides, doctors were important. Doctors were never expendable or unwanted. Even with just a handful of medical knowledge, he’s more valuable than without it. And isn’t that certainty of importance worth him struggling through a mass of medical texts he hardly understands?

Murphy reaches the end of the file with a new sense of determination. Afterwards, it feels like something long-buried in him has finally been laid to rest.

 

 

* * *

The only reason he finally leaves his room and joins the others is because Bellamy gathers all of them for what he calls an important announcement. They gather in the same place they toasted together a few nights ago, but instead of sitting in a circle on the floor this time, someone’s dragged a table in from somewhere else. Apparently, this room has been designated as the community meeting spot.

Unfortunately, the table means that Murphy has to sit next to the others, which is the last thing he wants to do right now. Everyone smells and they’re pissing him off, and he’s pretty sure if he gets too close to Harper she actually might try to rip his head off. She’s certainly trying to kill him with her stare alone, glaring holes into him the minute he enters the room. Monty just ignores him.

Luckily, Raven and Emori fill the spots between them – Echo sits alone by herself on the other side, looking nearly as uncomfortable with the company as him – so Murphy takes a seat on the far end of the table and tries to pretend he’s anywhere else but around a lot of people who hate him. If this is any indication of how living together with these people is going to go, it’s going to be a long five years.

Bellamy waits for them all to take a seat, then stands up in front of them like he’s about to give a speech. It reminds Murphy of Jaha, and that pisses him off even more. When the hell did Bellamy decide to be the new chancellor of the Ark? At least with Jaha, there’d been a vote.

“I have good news,” Bellamy says, almost cheerfully despite how utterly exhausted he looks.

“You found more food?” Murphy snaps.

Before he’s even fully finished talking, Monty mutters, “You finally decided to float Murphy?” It’s not said quietly. He was meant to hear it.

He leans over the table so he can see around Raven and Emori and glare at Monty, who’s too much of a coward to look him in the eyes and stares at the table in front of him instead. Harper, though, meets his eyes, and he almost wishes she didn’t. Her jaw is clenched tight, and her eyes are full of hatred. She’s stiff and coiled tight like a snake about to strike.

He ignores her to snap at Monty. “We’re only starving to death because of  _ you _ .”

“Yeah?” Monty exclaims, finally turning to face him. “And what is it  _ you _ do, Murphy?”

He feels Emori tense beside him. She shifts slightly to the side to position herself in front of him and block his view of the others. “He fixed your hands,” she hisses at Monty, and even if he can’t quite see Harper anymore, he can hear the sharp intake of breath that signals she’s about to join the argument.

She doesn’t get a word in. Raven slams a fist hard enough against the table that it rattles. “Shut the fuck up!” she shouts. “Let him talk!”

Bellamy looks just as angry as the rest of them now. He takes a deep breath before he speaks, and it’s clear he’s struggling to keep his voice an even tone. It’s kind of weird; Murphy would have expected him to just yell. Looks like Bellamy’s changed too.

“Whether we like it or not, the seven of us are stuck together for the next five years,” he says, voice wavering with the effort to keep it steady. “We can’t spend all of that time fighting.”

The fucking lecture is making Murphy’s skin crawl. He’s so sick of people who think they know better than him.

“Who the fuck voted you chancellor, Blake?” he snarls. 

That’s the straw needed to break Bellamy’s composure. He bursts into action, stalking forward and raising a hand to point straight at Murphy. For a split-second, he really thinks he’s about to get a second black eye – maybe get fully pummeled into the ground just like old times – and he wonders if anyone but Emori would even try to hold him back, but Bellamy doesn’t hit him. His shout is nearly as forceful as a punch would be, though, and it echoes angrily off the metal walls of the room. “I don’t see you volunteering to take charge!”

“Maybe I should,” Murphy says sarcastically. “Doesn’t seem like current leadership’s getting us anywhere –“

“That’s it!” Bellamy barks, but Murphy doesn’t get to see what follows that threat because Echo – who had been sitting so silently that Murphy had actually forgotten she was still in the room – jumps to her feet between them, throwing her arms out like a barricade.

“Stop it.” Her voice is sharp and cold. “We should not turn on each other.”

“Echo’s right,” Raven says. “Fighting’s not going to help any of us. You all want to live?” She looks around at all of them, trying to meet their eyes. Murphy keeps his eyes locked on Bellamy, even when the other man looks away to nod at Raven. “Then we need to work together.”

“We could work better without some of us here,” Monty mutters. Murphy’s face flushes with anger, but he doesn’t get a chance to say anything.

Raven whips around to look at Monty. “ _ All _ of us,” she snaps, before she turns to level Murphy with the same angry glare she just sent Monty, and it’s so hot on the back of his neck that he can’t help turning to look at her. Her face holds a silent threat. Murphy forces himself to sit back down.

“Thank you,” she says dryly as Echo also takes her seat. “I don’t have all fucking day for this.” She gestures at Bellamy. “Tell us what’s so important.”

Bellamy takes a deep breath, gathering himself again. Murphy bites his tongue.

“Emori found lye,” he says, and, while most of his earlier forced enthusiasm is gone, there’s still a trace of honest excitement in his voice.

Silence answers him. Murphy glances at the others out of the corner of his eye to confirm he’s not the only one who doesn’t know what the hell lye is. Even Emori looks confused. Bellamy deflates a little.

“What’s that?” Harper asks finally.

“The main ingredient in soap.”

The whole group sighs in relief. It might not fix the food problem, but the Ark would be a lot more bearable if it didn’t smell so much like sweat and BO. 

“Oh, thank god,” Raven mutters. A few others echo her.

“Thought everyone would be happy about that,” Bellamy says dryly.

“So you know how to make it?” Monty asks.

Bellamy nods. “It was part of my mom’s job. She taught me. I just need a few things and a room to work in, and I should have it ready in a couple days.” He turns to Echo and Emori. “I figure you guys have a handle on sorting supplies without me.” Echo nods, but Emori stiffens. From where he sits beside her, Murphy notices her hands bunch themselves into fists and her sharp intake of breath.

If Bellamy goes off to make his soap, he’s leaving Emori alone with Echo. Murphy’s heart rate spikes. He’s about to argue with Bellamy’s plan when Emori grabs his hand and squeezes hard – almost painfully. Murphy catches her eye, and she shakes her head in the negative once, then looks back at Bellamy like nothing’s wrong.

She doesn’t want him to make a scene. She still doesn’t want to cause any problems.

Murphy bites his tongue and stays silent, unhappy but unwilling to go against Emori’s wishes.

“Was that all?” Raven asks. Irritation is creeping back into her voice alongside the exhaustion.

“Yeah,” Bellamy sighs, just as irritated. “That was it.”

“Great. I have things to do.” Raven pushes herself up from the table. Murphy can’t help but watch as she does so, noticing that she still stiffens a bit when she puts weight on her bad leg, but she clearly tries to hide her pained reaction in front of the others.

He turns his back to her and tries to ignore it. Eventually, he’s sure, her leg will go back to normal.

 

* * *

 

Murphy stops hiding in his room after that.

He starts hiding in Medical.

Being around anyone but Emori – and Raven if she weren’t so stressed at the moment – still sounds absolutely terrible to him, but at least making his way through the medical files stored on the tablet, as slow-going and difficult as it is, gives him something to do. He can convince himself he’s not just isolating himself for no reason, he’s doing it to be useful. The others can’t get mad at him when they learn he’s taking on such an important role.

Well, maybe they’ll just laugh at him. It’s still a little ridiculous to assume he has any actual shot at becoming a practiced doctor. It takes him hours just to get through one file, and even then, half of the information won’t stick in his brain. When the time comes, he’ll probably be more likely to kill someone than save them.

Still, it’s better than lounging around in his room or out in the open where Monty or Harper might find him, and it’s definitely better than an old book of poetry as dry as the Dead Zone. At the very least, he manages to actually identify the medicine they have left on the Ring and jot down notes about their uses in their inventory list. That alone feels like an incredible accomplishment.

They won’t waste any medicine now, thanks to him. That little piece of him that was laid to rest finally settles for good.

A day after Bellamy’s announcement about the lye, Murphy’s in Medical fighting his way through the file on abrasions – he’s starting with the injuries he considers most probable – when he hears a commotion down the hallway. It takes him a second to recognize the screaming voice as Emori’s, and only another to toss the tablet aside and make it out the door, sprinting towards the sound.

Following the noise takes him to the supply room. When he bursts in, he sees Echo first, her face twisted into anger and the farthest from her typical icy mask as he’s ever seen it. Her lip is split down the middle and bleeding.

Emori stands across from her, yelling in Trigedasleng, waving her fists in tandem with her words.

“Planhaka,” Echo spits under her breath.

Emori lunges. Murphy barely reacts fast enough to grab her, but he manages to lock his arms around her waist and hold her back. “Say that to my face, nomajoka!” she snarls, fighting against his arms.

He doesn’t care at all about protecting Echo – he doesn’t know what she called Emori, but he’s sure if he did, he’d want to throw a punch himself – but he knows Emori will regret causing a scene later. And while he knows she can definitely protect herself, he’s sure in a real fight against Echo she’ll walk away with at least a couple injuries – he’s not willing to let that happen.

“What the hell did you say to her?” he demands of Echo. Before she can answer, Monty and Harper burst into the room and take in the scene, standing awkwardly in the doorway.

Echo scoffs and wipes at the blood on her lip. “I only told her she could set everything on one of the shelves,” she says defensively, eyeing Emori warily.

“It was  _ how _ you said it,” Emori argues. “You gave me no respect.”

“You have no respect,” Echo says, as emotionless and matter-of-factly as if she were telling them the sky on Earth is blue.

Murphy suddenly wants nothing more than hit her himself. He pushes Emori behind him and takes a step forward, but Monty throws an arm in front of him to hold him back. He considers swinging at Monty instead – maybe he can repay him for his eye.

“You’re Ice Nation,” Monty snaps, staring hard at Echo. His gaze burns hot like a fire, scalding and destructive, like he wants to destroy Echo with it. That anger throws Murphy off enough to stop trying to fight against him. “You’re not much better.”

Echo whips her head to look at him. Her gaze burns just as hot. “How dare you,” she hisses. “You know nothing of Azgeda, Sky Person.” She spits the last phrase like an insult, enunciation making the word ugly as it leaves her mouth.

“I know enough,” Monty snaps. “I know Ice Nation killed my father. Blew up Mount Weather. Ended the peace treaty.”

It’s the same all-consuming hatred Murphy had seen in him when he’d mentioned Jasper, and it seems like something easy for Monty to fall into, as if there’s always a simmering, angry star burning within him waiting to implode and take everything with it – and Murphy wonders how the hell Monty ended up so similar to him – or maybe if he always has been.

Or maybe the angry star was born the day his dad was murdered, same as him.

“Azgeda protects itself,” Echo tells Monty. Her voice is proud. “As all clans do. Don’t try to tell me Skaikru hasn’t killed to save itself. Skaikru murdered the mountain people.” Monty flinches so hard that Murphy can feel it from where his arm is pushed against his chest. The words are nonsense to him, but they land like a weight against Monty. Even Harper, when he glances back to her, grows sharper at the words. “Skaikru started a – “

“You’re not even from Azgeda anymore,” Emori snaps. “You’re banished. You’re splita.” She says the word almost gleefully, though there’s a darkness behind her eyes as it comes out. “You’re no better than me.”

Echo snarls something in Trigedasleng none of them can understand. Emori stiffens, ready to strike.

Bellamy storms into the room. He pushes through the crowd at the door to end up in the center of the scene between Echo and the others. “Okay,” he asks, staring at all of them angrily. “What the hell is going on here?”

Echo starts to answer. “The freikdreina – “

Murphy lunges this time. Monty just barely manages to hold him back. “Don’t you dare call her that!” he yells.

“It’s what she is,” Echo snaps, flicking her eyes between all of them warily. She steps closer to Bellamy.

Bellamy turns to look at her. “What’s it mean?” he demands.

“Mutant,” Echo says, and Murphy can hear the disgust in it and the fire in him burns hot – like the star he saw in Monty – and he wants to strangle her with his bare hands, make her feel what it’s like to choke to death slowly and painfully.

“It means waste,” Emori says, voice hard.

Bellamy frowns. He turns a hard, disapproving stare onto Echo. “Don’t use that word again.”

Echo looks baffled by the suggestion. “But there’s no other word for what she is.”

“Then use her name,” Bellamy snaps. He turns back to the rest of them. “There are no more clans up here. No one is banished. We have to work together.”

Easy for Bellamy to say when he’s never had to be the one banished or cast out. He’s never been the one thrown away like garbage.

He’s only done the throwing.

“Easy for you to say,” Murphy growls. He doesn’t even bother to look at Bellamy’s reaction. Instead, he turns to Echo. “Don’t come near us,” he snarls.

Then he grabs Emori’s hand and pulls her from the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng translations:
> 
> Planhaka - an utterly deplorable person  
> Nomajoka - motherfucker  
> Splita - an outcast
> 
> Freikdreina - of course means "mutant", but it originates from the word "drain", meaning essentially a drain on the resources. I'm assuming Trigedasleng doesn't have a non-slur word for mutant, which says a lot about the culture and is also super upsetting.


End file.
